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There are Times that Try Human’s Soul—Do Not Look Back! Something Might be Gaining on You!

May 2, 2020 12:21 am

There are people who learn, who are open to what happens around them, who listen, who hear the lessons. When they do something that is not wise, they do not do it again. And when they do something that works a little bit, they do it even better and harder the next time. The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or non-leaner. All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents. Contemporary radical criticisms of the liberal paradigm of justice carry less weight than they might because they fail to offer absolute alternative framework for reasoning about justice. Some authors do indeed offer principles of justice or images of the just society which they claim will help justify a political practice aiming to alter fundamentally the basic institutions, especially the economic institutions, of our society. Such efforts, however, lack grounding in a critically oriented framework of reasoning about justice. Lacking such grounding, proposals for radical egalitarian or socialist conceptions of justice constitute little more in the way of an alternative absolute theory of justice than do mere criticisms of the dominant framework. I argue that formulation of questions of justice exclusively in distributive terms tends toward conceptual confusion and fails to be basic enough. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

I also argue that the sort of criticism of traditional theories of justice that Milton Fisk, who believed justice is relative to the different interests of dominant and subordinate classes, leaves us with apparently impossible task of developing a theory which can make universalistic claims without abandoning or disguising the historical embeddedness of its origins and application because it collapses into something that is unacceptable and appeals to brute interest. This is because he cannot say which justice we should choose as the right one, or perhaps, indeed, that we choose at all. As Fisk argues, dominant and subordinate classes will tend to accept different principles of justice because of their conflicting interest. To solve these problems with traditional theories of justice, I offer some suggestions for alternative framework for theorizing about justice. To outline a theory of justice, I develop certain elements of the communicative ethics which Jurgen Habermas has proposed. Human rationality is a necessary outcome of successful communication. There are intuitively mastered rules for reaching an understanding and conducting argumentation, possessed by subjects who are capable of speech and action. The goal is to transform this implicit “know-how” into explicit “know-that,” for instance, knowledge, about how we conduct ourselves in the realm of moral-practical reasoning. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

In particular, I take up Habermas’s unelaborated suggestion that the ideal speech situation, which he argues any act of speaking presupposes, expresses the ideal of justice. I argue that the ideal speech situation offers the potential foundation for a framework of theorizing about justice which focuses not primarily on distribution, but on more fundamental questions of institutional relations and domination. I argue, further, that the application of the ideal speech situation to particular social configurations constitutes a means for solving the problem of how to construct an objective and critical conception of justice which does not merely reflect actual social circumstances at the same time that it remains historically specific. Since Adam Smith, almost every theory of social justice has focused primarily on questions of how social benefits should be allocated among members of the society. Insofar as it entails a theory of justice, utilitarianism is a paradigm of this distributive focus. Utilitarian methodology calls for treating all values as greater or lesser “bundles” of goods and comparing alterative distributions of bundles. Contemporary criticisms of classical utilitarian theory as ignoring the most important questions of justice—merit, desert, rights, and so forth—many be apt. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Most contemporary critics of utilitarianism, however, continue to formulate the question of justice primarily as a question of distribution. This distributive paradigm of questioning about justice so dominants philosophical thinking that even critics of the traditional liberal framework continue to formulate the focus of justice in exclusively distributive terms. A distributive focus on theorizing about justice is so much a part of our moral conceptualization that it does not appear possible to have any other to find. To such another focus we must look back to the ancient conception of justice, in particular that enunciated in the Platonic dialogues. For the ancients, justice refers to the whole of virtue insofar as it concerns relations with others. For Plato the question of justice does not concern primarily the proper distribution of social benefits and burdens. Rather, justice concerns first the organization of the community as a whole. We develop a conception of justice by constructing a vision of the organization of social positions and relations which will produce a harmonious and cooperative whole. I do not wish to adopt the Platonic conception of justice, for there is much in it that is inappropriate for us, or indeed absolutely pernicious. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

I will argue, however, that a theory of justice which takes as its primary question the structural and institutional relations of the society in its totality is better than one which focuses exclusively or primarily on questions of distribution. There are, in particular, two objections to the distributive orientation. First, formulation of many apt questions of justice in distributive terms tends to render them conceptually confused. Second, a distributive orientation tends to focus on the evaluation of the effects of given institutional forms and relations, instead of evaluating the institutional structures themselves. Questions about the principles and procedures according to which a society ought to distribute the material benefits of social production obviously constitute crucial questions of social justice. By no means all questions about the rights and liberties a society ought to protect for its members, the structure of power and decision-making, and so on. Here are some example of such questions of justice that are not distributive in any immediate sense: Is a division between mental and manual labour just? Is it just to raise taxes without the mandate of popular referendum? Is marriage just? #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

True to the utilitarian tradition, most modern theories of justice answer questions like these in terms of the relatively quantity of benefits that accrue to persons. They conceptualize questions of rights liberties, the justice of institutionalized positions, decision-making procedures, relations of authority, and so on, as questions of the proper distribution of bundles of non-material goods. Such distributively oriented treatment of questions of rights, liberties, power, and so on, however, tends to obscure the meaning of those concepts. I shall concentrate on the examples of rights and power. Talk of distribution of power within society is perhaps the most common way political theories wrongly construe questions f social justice in distributive terms. Democratic arrangements are frequently held to entail an equal distribution of power, while more hierarchical arrangements are defined by an unequal distribution of power. The conceptual confusion here may ultimately lie in an equivocation on the term “equality.” Equality in the distribution of goods refers to sameness of quantity or value, whereas equality in relations of power and powerlessness means something like “peership.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Discussion of power as some kind of “stock” which can be distributed obscures the fact that power, unlike wealthy, for example, does not exist except through social relations. Having social power means standing in relation with others such that one can control their actions or the conditions of their actions. One can have a plot of land without being related to anyone else, but having the power to levy rent on it essentially entails specific relations to others and a whole supporting set of institutions. It is thus misleading to conceptualize relations of power on analogy with the distribution of an amount of goods. If the social relations of power change in such a way that a person or group gains autonomy, this does not mean that some quantity of power has been redistributed. It means, rather, that a relation of power has been eliminated. This criticism that a distributively oriented theory of justice distorts the meaning of important social and political concepts, however, does not reach to the core of the problem with distributively oriented theories. The main criticism of a distribytively oriented theory of justice is that it tends to focus on patterns of distribution without even bringing into direct theoretical focus the structure of the institutional relations and the movement of social processes which bring this pattern of distribution about. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Like nearly all other modern theories of justice, then, John Rawls’s approach avoids asking about the justice of specific institutional structures themselves, along with the relations of power, exploitation and dependency they can produce. Several writers have argued, for example, that Rawls fails to focus on the institutional relations which underlie economic classes, and fails to justify his assumption that class inequality is inevitable. In his theory Rawls implicitly assumes many institutions as given, moreover, such as competitive markets, political bureaucracies, and monogamous heterosexual families, without every raising questions about whether the positions and relations these institutions entail are just. In sum, distributively oriented theories conceptualize questions of justice, whether of particular actions or practices, or of the pattern of rights and inequalities of a whole society, primarily as questions concerning the fair allocation of social goods, including non-material goods, among individuals. The approach advocated here, on the other hand, focuses on the structures of social organization that allow some individuals to have power over others, on the structure of decision making within and among institutions, and on the definition of social positions themselves. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

I am no arguing, of course, that questions of distribution are not important to a theory of justice, only that these questions of institutional structure should be considered first. On the basis of an ontology of love it is obvious that love it the principle of justice. If life as the actuality of being is essentially the drive towards the reunion of the separated, it follows that the justice of being is the form which is adequate to this movement. The further principles to be derived from the basic principle mediate between it and the concrete situation in which the risk of justice is demanded. There are four principles which perform this mediation. The first principle is that of adequacy, namely the adequacy of the form to the content. There is a complaint, as old as human laws, that laws which were adequate in the past are still in force, although inadequate in the past are still in force, although inadequate in the present. They do not give the form in which creative encounters of power with power are possible and a definite power of being results. They prevent such encounters from becoming creative, or, in terms of the ontology of love, from reuniting the separated. Laws, governing the family structure of another period or its economic relations, may destroy families and disrupt the class unity of this period. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The possibility for such discrepancies between law and actual encounter is based on the fact that forms which once expressed the power of being, have a tendency towards self-continuation beyond the point of their adequacy. This is so even in nature, as the remnants of former biological stages in later stages of development show. It is confirmed by the conservatism of institutions in human’s cultural and social existence. In both cases it is the risk of self-transcendence which keeps life in the bondage of tested institutions. However, the price paid for the safety in the old form is paid in terms of injustice. And injustice in terms of the inadequacy of the form ultimately undermines safety, so that the price was paid in vain. The second principle of justice is that of equality. It is implicit in every law, in so far as the law is equally valid for the equals. However, the question is: Who are the equals? In what sense is equality meant? In Plato’s Republic, the central concern of which is the idea of justice, a large group of human beings, for instance, those enslaved, are excluded from full humanity and the corresponding justice. Amongst the three groups who are equals as citizens and as such fully human, great inequalities do exist with respect to their claims for distributive justice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Christianity has reduced the fundamental inequality of the ancient World, namely that between human beings with full humanity and those with limited humanity. There is ultimate equality between all people in the view of God and His justice is equally offered to all of them. Hierarchy and aristocracy are irrelevant for the ultimate relation. However, they are very relevant for the inner human relations. Slavery was not abolished in the early Church and the medieval order was feudal, establishing qualifications of justice according to the claim for justice of each grace of social standing. The principle of equality was restricted to the equals within the same ontological degree, inside and outside the human society. Justice is based on a cosmic hierarchy. It is the form in which this hierarchy actualizes itself. The principle of equality can be understood in the opposite way. It can be applied democratically to every human being. If this is done, one points to the possession of reason in everyone who deserves the name “human.” It is their potential rationality which makes all humans equal. If real equality is to be created, this potentiality must be actualized. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

However, in the process of actualization innumerable differences appear, differences in the given nature of the individual, differences in one’s given social opportunity, differences in one’s given creativity, differences in all sides of one’s power of being. These differences entail differences in one’s social power and consequently in one’s claim for distributive justice. However, these differences are functional and not ontological, as in the systems of hierarchical thinking. They are not unchangeable. Nevertheless they prevent an egalitarian system of society. Actually there is no egalitarian structure in any society. The relation of equality and justice depends on the power of being in a human and one’s corresponding intrinsic claim for justice. The definition of this claim is rather diverse. It is one thing if one is posited on a grade of a hierarchical stairway and one expects to receive the justice which fits one’s grade. It is another if one is considered a unique and incomparable individual and one expects a special justice which is adapted to one’s particular power of being. It is still another if one is considered a potential bearer of reason and one expect the justice which is claimed by one’s dignity as a rational being in different states of development. In all these cases equality is present, but a qualified equality, never an egalitarian one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Every solution of the problems of human’s freedom can be accepted in the context of the present discussion. What is decisive is only that humans are considered as a deliberating, deciding, responsible person. Therefore one had probably better speak of the principle of personality as a principle of justice. The content of this principle is the demand to treat every person as a person. If people are dealt with as if they were things, justice is always violated. This has been called “reification” (Verdinglichung) or “objectivation” (Vergegenstandlichung). In any case it contradicts the justice of being, the intrinsic claim of every person to be considered a person. This claim includes and circumscribes the relation of freedom to justice. Freedom can mean the inner superiority of the person over enslaving conditions in the external World. The Stoic slave and the Christian slave were equal in their independence of the social conditions which contradicted external freedom but which were not necessarily in conflict with their spiritual freedom, with their persons and with their claim to be considered as persons. The Stoic participates in the justice of the Universe and its rational structure; the Christian expects the justice of the Kingdom of God. An enslavement of the personal center is not implied in one’s social destiny. Spiritual freedom is possible even “in chains.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

In contrast to this ideal of non-political spiritual freedom, liberalism tries to remove the enslaving conditions. The transition from the one to the other idea of freedom is the awareness that there are social conditions which prevent spiritual freedom either generally or for the great majority of people. This was the argument of the revolutionary Anabaptists in the Reformation period. It was the argument of many social reformers in all periods of Christianity, and it was the argument of humanistic and religious socialists in our time. However, more than this is involved in the liberal fight for political freedom. “Liberty” is considered to be an essential principle of justice because the freedom of political and cultural self-determination is seen as an essential element of personal existence. Even if both the master and the slave can participate in a transcendent freedom, slavery in all forms contradicts justice. This liberal doctrine of justice is an exception in the total history of humankind, and it is today receding in influence. Does our ontological analysis give an answer to the question of freedom in liberalism? And is there an answer to the previous question of the aristocratic and the democratic idea of equality in connexion with it? #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The ontology of love gives the answer. If justice is the form of the reunion of the separated, it must include both the separation without which there is no love and the reunion in which love is actualized. This is the reason why frequently the principle of fraternity or solidarity or comradeship or, more adequately, community has been added to the principles of equality and liberty. This addition has, however, been rejected in the name of a formal concept of justice, and under the assumption that community is an emotional principle adding nothing essential to the rational concept of justice—on the contrary, endangering its strictness. The decision of all these interwoven problems is dependent on the qualities of justice and the relationship of justice to power and love. Ideas are very general models of or assumptions about reality. They are patterns of interpretations, historically developed and socially shared. They sometimes are involved with beliefs, but are much more than belief and do not depend upon it. They are ways of thinking about and interpreting things. They are so pervasive and essential to how we think about and how we approach life that we often do not even know they are there or understand when and how they are at work. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Our idea system is a cultural artifact, growing up with us from earliest childhood out of the teachings, expectations and observable behaviours of family and community. Anthropologists observe that the World occupied by a human being comprises not only the surrounding land, water, sky, plant and animal life, human beings and works of human hands, but also a “symbolic reality,” which is superimposed upon material reality. Our idea system is shareable by many—perhaps by entire social systems, such as nations or families—and it develops and changes through time and historical process, often without it being noticed that it has in fact changed. Examples of ideas are freedom, education, happiness “The American Dream,” science, progress, death, home, the feminine or masculine, the religious, “Christian,” “Muslim,” church, democratic (form of government), fair, just family, evolution, God, the secular, and so on. If you wish to see ideas in action, look closely at artistic endeavours in their various forms (especially today, movies and music, which encapsulate most of what is called “pop culture”), and at efforts to persuade (especially today, politics and commercials). Look, for example, at the place, freedom, a major idea now, plays in automobile ads and rock lyrics. And look at our now largely paralyzed public education system to see what ideas are dominant in students and teachers. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Now, for all their importance to human life, ideas are never capable of definition or precise specification; and yet people never stop trying to define them, in their vain efforts to control them. They are broadly inclusive, historically developing ways of interpreting things and events, which, for all their power, often do not emerge into the consciousness of the individual. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for most people to recognize which ideas are governing their life and how those ideas are governing their life. This is partly because one commonly identifies his or her own governing ideas with reality, pure and simple. Ironically, it is often people who think of themselves as “practical” or as “humans of action”—both, of course, major ideas—who are most in the grip of ideas: so far in that grip that they cannot be bothered to think. They simply do not know what moves them. However, ideas govern them and have their consequences anyway. Another illustration of “idea grip” would be how most people think of success in life in terms of promotions and possessions. One’s culture is seen most clearly in what one thinks of as “natural” and as requiring no explanation or even thought. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Beware the fury of a patient person. Jacob saw his Redeemer—the law of Moses typifies Christ and proves He will come. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, Jacob spake many more things to my people at that time; nevertheless only these things have I caused to be written, for the things which I have written sufficeth me. And now I, Nephi, write more of the words of Isaiah, for my soul delighteth in his words. For I will liken his words unto my people, and I will send them forth unto all my children, for he verily saw my Redeemer, even as I have seen him. And my brother, Jacob, also has seen him as I have seen him; wherefore, I will send their words forth unto my children to prove unto them that my words are true. Wherefore, by the words of three, God hath said, I will establish my word. Nevertheless, God sendeth more witnesses, and he proveth all his words. Behold, my soul delighteth in proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ; for, for this end hath the law of Moses been given; and all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the World, unto humans, are the typifying of him. And also my soul delighteth in the covenants of the Lord which he hath made to our fathers; yea, my soul delighteth in his grace, and in his justice, and power, and mercy in the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“And my soul delighteth in proving unto my people that save Christ should come all human must perish. For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. However, there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time. And now I write some of the words of Isaiah, that whoso of my people shall see these words may lift up their hearts and rejoice for all humans. Now these are the words, and ye may liken them unto you and unto all humans,” reports 1 Nephi 10.1-8. God of my end, it is my greatest, noblest pleasure to be acquainted with Thee and my rational, immortal soul; it is sweet and entertaining to look into my being when all my powers and passions are untied and engaged in pursuit of thee, when my soul longs and passionately breathes after conformity to Thee and the full enjoyment of Thee; no hour pass away with so much pleasure as those spent in communion with Thee and with my hearts. O how desirable, how profitable to the Christian life is a spirit of holy watchfulness and Godly jealousy over myself, when my soul is afraid of nothing except grieving and offending Thee, the blessed God, my Father and friend, whom I then love and long to please, rather than be happy in myself! #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Knowing, as I do, that this is the pious temper, worthy of the highest ambition, and closet pursuit of intelligent creatures and holy Christians, may my joy derive from glorifying and delighting Thee. I long to fill all my time for Thee, whether at home or in the way; to place all my concerns in Thy hands; to be entirely at Thy disposal, having no will or interest of my own. Help me to live to Thee forever, to make Thee my last and only end, so that I may never more in one instance love my sinful nature. O God, our Refuge in pains, our Strength in weakness, our Help in tribulations, our Solace in tears; spare, O Lord, spare Thy people, give not up to beasts the souls that praise Thee. O God of Heavenly powers, fulfill Thy promised mercy; that the hearts of the rebellious may be subdued to the truth of the Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who savest all humans, and willest not that any should perish; look upon the sols which have been deceived by the fraud of the devil; that all heretical perversity may be driven away, and the hearts of the erring may repent, and return to Thine unshaken truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Dissolve, O Christ, the schisms of heresy, which seek to subvert the faith, which strive to corrupt the truth; that as Thou art acknowledged in Heaven and in Earth as one and the same Lord, so Thy people, gathered from all nations, may serve Thee in the unity of faith. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

Plenty of space to create in this #MillsStation Residence 2 home! We love the modern design of this backyard. But you know what would make it perfect? Some citrus trees! 🍋 Check out today’s blog post to learn why citrus is a great addition to every backyard. 😍🌳 Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/move-in-ready-home-site-61/

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The Greatest thing in the World is to Know How to be Self-Sufficient!

April 30, 2020 11:26 pm

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there by any kindness I can show or any good things I can do to follow human beings, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. People do not live by bread alone. They need buttering up once in awhile. We all need it. The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. Too often we underestimate the power of respect, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. Hegemony, which is the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group, in any political context is indeed fragile. It requires renewal and modification through the assertion and reassertion of power. It is crucial to the concept that hegemony is not a “given” and permanent state of affairs, but it has to be actively won and secured; it can also be lost. Ideological work is the winning and securing of hegemony over time. Ideology is composed of text that are not closed, and counter-tendencies regularly appear in the seams and cracks of dominant forms. Mediated communications ranging from popular television shows to rap and rock music, even graffiti scrawled over surfaces of public spaces, all inscribe messages that challenge central political positions and cultural assumptions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Counterhegemony, which is defined as the way people develop ideas and discourses to challenge dominant assumptions, beliefs and established patterns of behaviour, and is employed to explain some of the criticism of, and mobilization against, globalization, is the intellection foundation for much of the anti-globalization movement. These tendencies are not solely inherent in texts. They are formulated in processes of communication—in the interpretations, social circulation, and uses of media content. As with the American soldiers’ use of military gas masks as inhaling devices to heighten the effect of marijuana smoke, or the homeless’s transformation of supermarket shopping carts into personal storage vehicles, ideological resistance and appropriation frequently involved reinventing institutional messages for purposes that differ greatly from their creators’ intentions. Expressions of the dominant ideology are sometimes reformulated to assert alternative, often completely resistant or contradictory messages. Furthermore, resistance to hegemony is not initiated solely by media consumers. Texts themselves are implicated. Ideology can never be stated purely and simply. Ways of thinking are always reflexive and embedded in a complex, sometimes contradictory, ideological regress. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Audience interpretations and uses of media imagery also eat away at hegemony. When dominant ideology is weaker than social resistance, hegemony fails. Gay subcultures, feminist organizations, environmental groups, radical political parties, music-based formations such as punks, B-boys, Rastafarians, hairography (which Britney Spears and Beyonce are both very famous for), metal heads all use media and their social networks to endorse counter-hegemonic values and lifestyles. Indeed, we have only just begun to examine the complex relationship between ideological representations and social action. The thought of the burden that the self-actualized has taken on oneself may seem dreadful, but one has one’s consolations even thought they are intangible. One has found unbroken peace and ultimate truth. One does not ask for more, not even the ecstatic bliss which delights the mystic, but which is necessarily intermittent. One knows that the whole creation is moving onwards to self-discovery which means it is moving onwards to find the same things one has found. The process is low and painful, but it will surely be successful. The self-actualized has conquered separativeness in one’s mind and realized the spirit of God in oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The logical consequences are tremendous. It follows that there is no liberation from the round of spiritual births and rebirths for the self-actualized; one has to go through it like the others. Of course, one does this with full understanding whereas they are plunged in darkness. However, if one identifies oneself with the spirit of God, then, one cannot desert but must go on to the end, working for the liberation of others in turn. This is one’s crucifixion, that being able to save others one is unable to save oneself. “And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, ‘And he (or she) was numbered with the transgressors.’” Why? Because compassion rules one, not the ego. Nobody is likely to want such a goal (until, indeed one is almost ready for it) so it is usually kept secret or symbolized. Again: “For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” What is the self-actualized reaction to the cosmos? It is very different from that of the unenlightened who have never asked the question, “What am I?” The self-actualized had no sense of conflict, no inner division. One has expanded one’s notion of self until it has embraced the Universe and therefore rightly one may say “the Universe is the Spirit of God.” This means that one has expanded the understanding of one’s minds. Less enlightened individuals only say “the Universe is an idea.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

All these sufferers come to one in their need and expect so much from one, but one must expect and ask nothing from them; one is to be content with this one-way transaction. If one wishes anything in return—even an acknowledgment of service rendered, much less a payment in any mental, emotional, or physical form—the ego has reared its head and the service is impure. If one helps them, it is out of natural good will to all humans. The self-actualized approaches them with compassion balanced by comprehension. No mother asks why she should help her child or concern herself with the well-being of her husband (or domestic partner). She identifies herself with them and takes it for granted that their interests are her own. Similarly, the illuminate takes it for granted that the interest are her or his own. Similarly, the illuminate takes it for granted that the interest of all humankind are one’s own and others are one’s family. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. It is part of nature. No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. “There will be no more delay! But in the days when the seventh Angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets,” reports Revelations 10.7. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Situations involving persons, change in the behaviour of the persons, and the effects of different qualities of interpersonal relationships exist in almost every human undertaking. As client begin to realize how imprisoning their usual choices and responses have been and how capable they are of transcending them, they develop new ways of standing in the World and new conceptions of who they will become. They develop a sense of aha, or resonance, within themselves that clearly apprises them of their predicaments. They may say things like, “I never realized how deeply these feelings affected me and how strongly I want to experience them again in my life,” or “Now I see how so much of my life had been wasted on shame—and it is time I broke the cycle.” The ingredient that gives these realizations substance is intentionality, which precedes that which is traditionally referred to as insight. While insight is conceptual and schematic, intentionality is spontaneous and bodily and comprises one’s total orientation to the World at that time. Another precondition for insight is what is referred to as inner vision—which is a vital sense of one’s own powers in directing one’s own life. Inner vision is not to be capture in words. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Those who equate a verbal account of the inner sight with the inward vision itself make the familiar semantic error of mistaking the map for the territory. What can be said about an inner sight is always less tan the sight itself and is always relatively impotent in brining about true life changes, especially when compared with the power of one’s own liberating inward realization. It is the inward realization, them the intentionality, that give experiences meaning. The chief question, of course, is, How do we as therapists, help clients to consolidate these meanings—what tools or inspirations can we provide? The answer is, No tools or inspirations are needed other than those they have already gleaned form our being present with them and from their discovering (internalizing) the ability to be present with themselves. Yet it is of vital importance that we reinforce these developments, especially toward the close of treatment. For example, I often invite clients to explore their specific values toward the end of therapy—which values they hold dear and how they plan on implementing those values. I also find it helpful to reflect back to clients, not merely what they say, but what I hear them intending: “You seem to be excited about getting out there and doing what you felt you could not do all those years. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

“I feel exuberance when you speak about marrying your fiancée, a sense that you are deeply ready to be involved; “I sense that you no longer need to be the flashiest guy on the block, tat you can now enjoy quiet moments at home;” “I do not get the sense of you walking on eggshells anymore—you no longer downplay your power;” or “You are not going to let physical disabilities disable you mentally—this is the message that you have declared to me today.” It is important that people know that if they cannot get outer freedom, they can get inner freedom, of mind and heart. No Worldly advantage can tempt the self-actualized into desertion of one’s sacred task of serving humanity, nor can any egoism lead one into betrayal of those who trust one. The goodwill which one shows to all people is devoid of any self-seeking motive, is a natural expression of the love which one finds in the innermost chambers of one’s soul. The World play is but an illusion of the mind, but the integral vision of the self-actualized enables one to act one’s part perfectly in they very heart of the World’s tumult. The knowledge that all action is ultimately illusory does not prevent one being dynamically active Supreme calm and silence reigns in one’s center, but one’s harmony with Nature is such that one joins the World-movement spontaneously. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

One does not fall into the error of a certain kind of ascetic who assumes a callous indifference to the sufferings of others as part of one’s plan to render oneself invulnerable. Such a person is truly a Christ-like one, inasmuch as one seeks to open the door of the kingdom of Heaven for others as well as oneself. One may or may not know in advance that one’s efforts will avail little, but if the Power bids one say what must be said, one will accept the result calmly. When there is no feeling of separateness from others, there can be no resultant feeling of doing good when helping them. What is the basis for such holistic reorientations? Perhaps it can be described as follows: The freer that people feel to experience themselves, the less panic they harbour; the less panic, the less urgency they feel to rearrange and hence dysfunctionally distort themselves. To the degree that people can draw upon this strength, the more fully they can subsist. Intuition may also be expressed in this way: human’s unconditional concern is the subjective response to the Protestant call to protest. An analysis of religion, of literature, of philosophy, of culture, of love, would reveal that people experience an unconditional concern. Whatever they believe or disbelieve, they touch a realm of in their self-awareness which escapes doubt or belief. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

If justification is an act of God, human’s unconditional concern is the acceptance by humans of their justification even in the midst of questionings and doubts. For questions belong to the intellect, but this concern lies beyond the intellect, in what we call the depths of reason. We are saved neither by merit nor by belief, but by the Unconditional. This term point to that element in every religious experience which makes it religious. It characterizes that which is our ultimate and consequently unconditional concern, whether we call if “God” or “Being as such” or “the Good as such,” or “The True as such,” or whether we give it any other name. Unconditional is a quality which we experience in encountering reality, for instance, in the unconditional character of the voice of conscience, the logical as well as the moral. This description of the Unconditional as a quality, and not a being, brings us to an important fact: “Nobody can have the ultimate, nothing conditioned can possess the Unconditional. This undercuts every attempt to identify the Unconditional directly. The Unconditional is not a God; it is not a being. It is, rather, some quality of the self which we have an indirect experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Were the Unconditional only a quality of the self, it would be ours, yours and mine, but as we, you and I, are conditioned and, as such, unable to possess the Unconditional, the fact that we experience total commitment, ultimate devotion, unconditional concern points to a complementary aspect of existence: that the Unconditional is both in us and beyond us. Grace is not a possession; it is only received through faith. Likewise, human’s unconditional concerns, in as far as they are truly unconditional, reach both the rock bottom of self and a transcendental element which dominates the self. Two Worlds touch at this point. Jesus Christ praises the less affluent in so far as they live in two Worlds, the present World and the World to come. And he threatens the arrogant affluent in so far as they live in one World alone. This makes for the unchanging greatness of the Psalms. For what the Psalmist expresses is that the Presence of the center of all life within the center of one’s life implies both a radical attack on one’s existence, and the ultimate meaning of one’s existence. We are known in a depth of darkness through which we ourselves do not even dare to look. And at the same time, we are seen in a height of a fullness which surpasses our highest vision. Nothing matters; yet everything is supremely important if it has an unconditioned means, an unconditioned depth, an unconditioned reality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Unconditional concern implies this infinite tension between the conditions of our existence and the commitment to an unconditional element; it entails daring and risk. This is faith: Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The principle of justification by faith alone contains more than strikes the eye. As understood, it means faith in Christ as the Saviour. The Greater Catechism reads: “I believe that Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has been made my Lord, that through his blood he has liberated me from my sins, from the Devil, from death and from all misfortune.” Faith cannot be pinned down to one set of beliefs or identified with one emotional experience. These distortions of faith are corrected by the Protestant principle that nothing condition may vehicle the Unconditional. Rather, faith underlies every belief and every emotion: it is the total commitment f humans to ultimacy, the total surrender of one who accepts this claim [of ultimacy], the concern about our existence in its ultimate whence and wither. Should one ask, “What is the Ultimate?,” an answer may be sought in he fact that people have devised a multitude of faiths; they have identified the Ultimate with this God or that; they have worshipped symbols of the ultimate. Through perhaps mutually exclusive, all these tend to the same point: total commitment. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Jacob explains that the Jews will crucify their God—they will be scattered until they begin to believe in Him—American will be a land of liberty where no king will rule—reconcile yourselves to God and fain salvation through His grace. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, I Jacob, speak unto you again, my beloved brethren, concerning this righteous branch of which I have spoken. For behold, the promises which we have obtained are promises unto us according to the flesh; wherefore, as it has been shown unto me that many of our children shall perish in the flesh because of unbelief nevertheless, God will be merciful unto many; and our children shall be restored, that they may come to that which will give them the true knowledge of their Redeemer. Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must need be expedient that Christ—for in the last night the Angel spake unto me that this should be his name—should come among the Jews, among those who are the more wicked part of the World; and they shall crucify him—for it behooveth our God, and there is none other nation on Earth that would crucify their God. For should the mighty miracles be wrought among other nations they would repent, and know that he be their God. However, because of priestcrafts and iniquities, they at Jerusalem will stiffen their neck against him, that he be crucified. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

“Wherefore, because of their iniquities, destructions, famines, pestilences, and bloodshed shall come upon them; and they who shall not be destroyed shall be scattered among all nation. However, behold, this saith the Lord God: When the day cometh that they shall believe in me, that I am Christ, then have I covenanted with their fathers that they shall be restored in the flesh, upon the Earth, unto the lands of their inheritance. And it shall come to pass that they shall be gathered in from the isles of the sea, and from the four parts of the Earth; and the nations of the Gentiles shall be great in the eyes of me, saith God, in carrying them forth to the lands of their inheritance. Yea, the kings of the Gentiles shall be nursing fathers unto them, and their queens shall become nursing mothers; wherefore, the promises of the Lord are great unto the Gentiles, for he hath spoken it, and who can dispute? However, behold, this land, said God, shall be a land of thine inheritance and Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land. And this land shall be a land of thine inheritance and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land. And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land, who shall rise up unto the Gentiles. And I will fortify this land against all other nations. And one that frighteth against Zion shall perish, saith God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

“For one that raiseth up a kind against me shall perish, for I, the Lord, the king of Heaven, will be their king, and I will be a light unto them forever, that hear my words. Wherefore, this cause, that my covenants may be fulfilled which I have made unto the children of humans, that I will do unto them while they are in the flesh, I must needs destroy the secrets works of darkness, and of murders, and of abominations. Wherefore, one that frighteth against Zion, both Jew and Gentile, both bound and free, both male and female, shall perish; for they are they who are the whore of all the Earth; for they who are not for me are against me, saith our God. For I will fulfill my promises which I have made unto the children of humans, that I will do unto them while they are in the flesh—wherefore, my beloved brethren, thus saith our God: I will afflict thy seed by the hand of the Gentiles; nevertheless, I will soften the hearts of the Gentiles, that they shall be like unto a father to them; wherefore, the Gentiles shall be blessed and numbered among the house of Israel. Wherefore, I will consecrate this land unto thy seed, and them who shall be numbered among thy seed, forever, for the land of their inheritance; for it is a choice land, saith God unto me, above all other lands, wherefore I will have all humans that well thereon that they shall worship me, saith God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

“And now, my beloved brethren, seeing that our merciful God has given us so great knowledge concerning these things, let us remember him, and lay aside our sins, and not hang down our heads, for we are not cast off; nevertheless, we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea. However, great are the promises of the Lord unto them who are upon the isles of the sea; wherefore as it says isles, there must needs be more than this, and they are inhabited also by our brethren. For behold, the Lord God has led away from time to time from the house of Israel, according to his will and pleasure. And now behold, the Lord remembereth all them who have been broken off, wherefore he remembereth us also. Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“Wherefore, may God raise you from death by the power of the resurrection, and also from everlasting death by the power of the atonement, that ye may be received into the eternal kingdom of God, that ye may praise hm through grace divine. Amen,” 2 Nephi 1-25. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest, that I go to, than I have ever known. I question not but Your Honors d to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches, and would not be guilty of innocent blood for the World. But, by my own innocency, I know you are the wrong way. O God Most High, Most Glorious, the thought of thine infinite serenity cheers me, for I am toiling and moiling, troubled and distressed, but thou art forever at perfect peace. Thy designs cause Thee no fear or care of unfulfillment, they stand fast as the eternal hills. Thy power knows no bound, Thy goodness no suit. Thou bringest order out of confusion, and my defeats are Thy victories: The Lord God omnipotent reigneth. I come to Thee as a sinner with cares and sorrows, to leave every concern entirely to Thee, every sin calling for Christ’s precious blood; revive deep spirituality in my heart; le me live near to the great Shepherd, hear his voice, know its tones, follow its calls. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Keep me from deception by causing me to abide in the truth, from harm by helping me to walk in the power of the Spirit. Give me intenser faith in the eternal verities, burning into me by experience the things I know; let me never be ashamed of the truth of the gospel, that I may bear its reproach, vindicate it, see Jesus Christ as its essence, know in it the power of the Spirit. Lord, help me, for I am often lukewarm and chill; unbelief mars my confidence, sin makes me forget Thee. Let the weeds that grow in my soul be cut at their roots; grant me to know that I truly live only when I live to Thee, that all else is trifling. Thy presence alone can make me holy, devout, strong and happy. Abide in me, gracious God. We beseech Thee, O Lord, give strength to the weary, assistance to the sufferers, comfort to the sad, help to those in tribulation. That it may please Thee to look upon and to relieve the miseries of the poor and of captives: We beseech Thee, hear us. How great is Thy mercy, O Lord, in succouring the captives, sparing the wretched, forgiving the sinners, supporting travelers, relieving the oppressed, hearing prayers, giving to the destitute what they need, converting barbarous nation to the calling upon Thy Name! Be pleased, O loving and merciful God, to hear us when we implore that mercy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Essential to our effective petitionary prayer is a prayer list. I say this first because of my own repeated experiences. For example, I may be praying for my mother, and as I pray for her I see our old family homes at 3609 Victor Avenue. In front is parked my dad’s Arctisblau arctic metallic blue 1990 BMW 750iL. It had front and rear spoilers, tinted windows, and custom wheels. Suddenly I am a kid again, wearing my black leather jacket, sitting in the passenger seat, and heading down Shore Line Drive to Alameda Beach. I can smell the ocean and cocoa butter. So much for my “prayers for Mother!” This is why I need a prayer list. To be sure, even using a list, my mind still wanders. However, when it does, I always have my list to bring me back. And when I am especially prone to distraction I can place my index finger on her name and pray with my eyes wide open—moving from name to name in this way. Every Christian person should have a prayer list which listen among other things, the names of one’s family and, if married, spouse and children. Moreover, the list ought to be detailed, featuring personal items under the names of those closet to one. I have found that small “Post-its” placed under headings help keep my list updated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

My daily prayer list carries the following headings, each with several details under it: Family, staff, secretaries, and custodians, ill, grieving, important events, present problems, ministries, weekly worship, never believers, missions list. In addition to my daily list, I have four other lists which I try to go through once a week. List 1 has: Ongoing ill, personal requests from others, evangelism, spiritual warfare. List 2 has: World, USA, personal life, needed personal qualities. List 3 has: Christian leaders, pastors, upcoming ministries and vision. List for has: Government leaders (federal, state, and local), the fire department and others. Quite frankly, I could not get on at all without a prayer list, not only because it tames my wandering mine, but also because it insures that I will not neglect things that are important. O God, Who are the Author of love, and the Lover of pure peace and affection, heal the diseases of all Chrisitans who are sik, and let all who are terrified by fears, afflicted by poverty, harassed by tribulation, worn down by illness, given over to punishments, and all prisoners, and wayfarers, be set free by Thine indulgent tenderness, raised up by amendment life, and cherished by Thy daily compassion. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

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This Nation, Under God, Shall Have a New Birth of Freedom and Shall Not Perish from the Earth!

April 30, 2020 1:38 am

The dream begins, most of the time, with believing in yourself, by loving yourself, pushing yourself, and allowing God to lead you on to the next level, sometimes enlightening you along the way with truth. God posses in penetrating insight into His children’s needs. We have already seen that external stimuli are not necessary for central processes to be active. As networks of assemblies and phase-cycles are activated and continue their process in semi-independence of further incoming information, we get something like “looking ahead.” The pattern of impulses formed within the structure of connexions will function as an apparatus of orientation by representing both the actual state of the environment and the changes to be expected by that environment. Here we are back to the process of “expectancy.” Our expectations of what will happen are already on the map. Either a similar sequence of events has happened in the past and for that reason may be expected again in the future; or higher-order processes have formed an image of what can happen, on the basis of whatever information is available about what has happened in the past. Thus behavior now is guided and directed by an expectation, just concept t (for “triangle”) could direct and guide the eye to look for angles. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The representation or model of the environment will thus constantly tend to run ahead of the actual situation. This representation of the possible results following from the existing position will of course be constantly checked and corrected by the newly arriving sensory signals which record actual developments in the environment. The representations of the external environment which will guide behaviour will thus be not only representations of the actually existing environment, but also representations of the changes to be expected in that environment. We must therefore conceive of the model as constantly trying out possible developments and determining action in the light of the consequences which, from the representations of such actions, would appear to follow from it. On the map are good places, and paths to good places—goals, we might say, and steps to those goals. The model is the active part of the map which shows at any moment where we are in relation to the good places on our maps (and in relation to painful places as well). The map enables us to look ahead to some extent, that is to have expectations of what can happen next. What can happen next may lead to good places eventually or to painful places. Expectations can turn into preferred or dreaded outcomes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The image on the map which already has good feelings attached to it may be kept in mind by the processes of reverberation. It is thereby likely to steer the organism to respond selectively to further information, according to the messages congruity with a good path. The parts of the map associated with good feelings, which hold our preferences, can thus act as gyroscopes, bringing the organism back on course towards good things when it has deviated. Part of the map associated with bad feelings may of course operate in a similar way. The data on fight and flight as defense reactions makes the instinctive theory of aggression appear in a peculiar light. The impulse to flee plays—neurophysiologically and behaviourally—the same if not a larger role in animal behaviour than the impulse to fight. Neurophysiologically, both impulses are integrated in the same way; there is no basis for saying that aggression is more “natural” than flight. Why, then, do instinctivists talk about the intensity of the innate impulses of aggression, rather than about the innate impulse for flight? #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

If one were to translate the reasoning of the instinctivist regarding the impulse for fight to that of flight one would arrive at the this kind of statement: “Humans are drive by an innate impulse to flee; one may try to control this impulse by one’s reason, yet this control will prove to be relatively inefficient, even though some means can be found that may serve to curb the power of the ‘flight instinct.’” Considering the emphasis that has been given to innate human aggression as one of the gravest problems of social life, from religious positions down to the scientific work, a theory centered around human’s “uncontrollable flight instinct” may sound funny, but it is neurophysiologically as sound as that of “uncontrolled aggression.” In fact, from a biological standpoint it would seem that flight serves self-reservation better than fight. To political or military leaders it may, in fact, not sound funny, but rather sensible. They know from experience that human’s nature does not seem to incline toward heroism and that many measures have to be taken to motivate humans to fight and to prevent them from running away in order to save one’s life. The student of history may rise the question whether the instinct for flight has not proven to be at least as powerful a factor as that for fight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

One may come to the conclusion that history has been determined not so much by instinctive aggression as by the attempt to suppress human’s “flight instinct.” One may speculate that a large part of human’s social arrangements and ideological efforts have been devoted to this aim. Humans had to be threatened with death to instill in them a feeling of awe for the superior wisdom of their leaders, to make them believe in the value of honour. One tried to terrorize one with the fear of being called a coward or a traitor, or one simply got him or her drunk with liquor or wit the hope of booty and women. Historical analysis might show that the repression of the flight impulse and the apparent dominance of the fight impulse is largely due to the cultural rather than to biological factors. These speculations are only intended to point to the ethological bias in favour of the concept of Homo aggressivus; the fundamental facts remains, that the brain of animals and humans has built-in neuronal mechanisms which mobilize aggressive behaviour (or flight) in response to threats to the survival of the individual or the species, and that this type of aggression is biologically adaptive and serves life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In our own Anglo-American culture there seems to be two common-sense models according to which we formulate our conceptions of behaviour: the real, sincere, or honest performance; and the false one that thorough fabricators assemble us, whether meant to be taken unseriously, as in the work of stage actors, or seriously, as in the work of confidence people. We tend to see real performances as something not purposely put together at all, being unintentional product of the individual’s unselfish conscious response to the facts in one’s situation. And contrived performances we tend to see as something painstakingly pasted together, one false item on another, since there is no reality to which the items of behaviour could be a direct response. It will be necessary to see now that these dichotomous conceptions are by way of being the ideology of honest performers, providing strength to the show they put on, but a poor analysis of it. First, let it be said that there are many individuals who sincerely believe that the definition of the situation they habitually project is the real reality. In this report I do not mean to question their proportion in the population but rather the structural relation of their sincerity to the performances they offer. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

If a performance is to come off, the witnesses by and large must be able to believe that the performers are sincere. This is the structural place of sincerity in the drama of events. Performers may be sincere—or be insincere but sincerely convinced of their own sincerity—but this kind of affection for one’s part is not necessary for its convincing performances. There are not many French cooks who are really Russian spies, and perhaps there are not many women who want to play the part of wife to one man and mistress to another but these duplicities do occur, often being sustained successfully for long periods of time. This suggests that while persons usually are what they appear to be, such appearances could still have been managed. There is, then, a statistical relation between appearances and reality, not an intrinsic or necessary one. In fact, given the unanticipated threats that play upon a performance, and given the need (later to be discussed) to maintain solidarity with one’s fellow performers and some distance from the witnesses, we find that a rigid incapacity to depart from one’s inward view of reality may at times endanger one’s performance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Some performances are carried off successfully with complete dishonesty, other with complete honesty; but for performances in general neither of these extremes is essential and neither, perhaps, is dramaturgically advisable. The implication here is that an honest, sincere, serious performance is less firmly connected with the solid World than one might assume. And this implication will be strengthened if we look again at the distance usually placed between quite honest performances and quite contrived ones. In this connection take, for example, the remarkable phenomenon of stage acting. It does take deep skill, long training, and psychological capacity to become a good stage actor. However, this fact should not blind us to another one: that almost anyone can quickly learn a script well enough to give a charitable audience some sense of realness in what is being contrived before them. And it seems this is so because ordinary social intercourse is itself put together as a scene is put together, by the exchange of dramatically inflated actions, counteractions, and terminating replies. Scripts even in the hands of unpracticed players can come to life because life itself is a dramatically enacted thing. All the World is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it is not are not easy to specify. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

The recent use of “psychodrama” as a therapeutic technique illustrates a further point in this regard. In these psychiatrically staged scenes patients not only act out parts with some effectiveness, but employ no script in doing so. Their own past is available to them in a form which allows them to stage a recapitulation of it. Apparently a part once played honestly and in earnest leave the performer in a position to contrive a showing of it later. Further, the parts that significant others play to one to switch from being the person that one was to being the persons that others were for one. This capacity to switch enacted roles when obliged to do so could have been predicted; everyone apparently can do it. For in learning to perform our parts in real life we guide our own productions by not too consciously maintaining an incipient familiarity with the routine of those to whom we will address ourselves. And when we come to be able properly to manage a real routine we are able to do this in part because of “anticipatory socialization,” having already been schooled in the reality that is just coming to be real for us. When the individual does move into a new position in society and obtains a new part to perform, one is not likely to be told in full detail how to conduct oneself, nor will the facts of one’s new situation press sufficiently to one from the start to determine one’s conduct without one’s further giving thought to it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Ordinarily one will be given only a few cues, hints, and stage directions, and it will be assumed that one already has in one’s repertoire a large number of bits and pieces of performances that will be required in the new setting. The individual will already have a fair idea of what modesty, deference, or righteous indignation looks like, and can make a pass at playing these bits when necessary. One may even be able to play out the part of hypnotic subject or commit a “compulsive” crime on the basis of models for these activities that one is already familiar with. A theatrical performance or a staged confidence game requires a thorough scripting of the spoken content of the routine; but the vast part involving “expression given off” is often determined by meager stage directions. It is expected that the performer of illusions will already know a good deal about how to manage one’s voice, one’s face, and one’s body, although one—as well as any person who directs one—may find it difficult indeed to provide a detailed verbal statement of this kind of knowledge. And in this, of course, we approach the situation of the straightforward person in the street. Socialization may not so much involve a learning of the many specific details of a single concrete part—often there could not be enough time or energy for this. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

What does seem to be required of the individual is that one learn enough pieces of expression to be able to “fill in” and manage, more or less, any part that one is likely to be given. The legitimate performances of everyday life are not “acted” or “put on” in the sense that the performer knows in advance just what one is going to do, and does this solely because of the effect it is likely to have. The expressions it is felt one is giving off will be especially “inaccessible” to one. However, as in the case of less legitimate performers, the incapacity of the ordinary individual to formulate in advance the movements of one’s eyes and body does not mean that one will not express oneself through these devices in a way that is dramatized and pre-formed in one’s repertoire of actions. In short, we all act better than we know how. When the individual’s stigma is established in one during one’s stay in an institution, and when the institutions retains a discrediting hold upon one for a period after one’s release, one may expect a special cycle of passing. For example, in one mental hospital it was found that patients re-entering the community often planned to pass in some degree. Patients who were forced to rely on the rehabilitation officer, the social service worker, or the employment agencies for a job, often discussed among their fellows the contingencies they faced and the standard strategy for dealing with them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

For the first job, official entrée would necessitate the employer knowing about their stigma, and perhaps the personnel officer, but always the lower levels of the organization and workmates could be kept in some ignorance. As suggested, it was felt that this could involve a certain amount of insecurity because it would not be known for sure who “knew” and who did not, and how long-lasting would be the ignorance of those who did not know. Patients expressed the feeling that after staying in a placement job of this kind for six months, long enough to save some money and get loose from hospital agencies, they would quit work and, on the basis of the six-month work record, get a job someplace else, this time trusting that everyone at work could be kept ignorant of the stay in a mental hospital. Another strategy of those who pass is to present sights of their stigmatized failing as signs of another attribute, one that is less significantly a stigma. People with mental impairments, for example, apparently sometimes try to pass as mental patients, the latter being the lesser of the two social evils. “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard,” reports Acts 4.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Similarly, a hard of hearing person may intentionally style his or her conduct to give others the impression that he or she is a daydreamer, an absent-minded person, an indifferent, easily bored person—even someone who is feeling faint, or snores and therefore is unable to answer quiet question since one is obviously asleep. These character traits account for failure to hear without the imputation of deafness. The self-actualized has no wish to put one’s ego forward, makes no pretensions to spiritual superiority, yet one’s wishes to awaken others to the idea that enlightenment is possible, is worth seeking, and is accompanied by unparalleled felicity. It is possible for a person to realize one’s high aspiration. However, will one then find that all is bliss? How could that be when first one would become much more sensitive to the Word’s miseries and sorrows and, second, much more aware that everything that is, including oneself, is merely a passing show—just like a dream of the night which vanishes in the morning? Will there not be a touch of melancholy in these two aspects of one’s awareness? The acceptance will be there, for one will be just as much aware of the Real which does not pass, but this acceptance will itself be touched with a kind of resignation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Is this what the religio-mystics mean when they so often admonish others to resign themselves to God’s will? There is a type of legalism I want to address: the observance of humanmade rules. Paul’s call to stand firm in our freedom in Christ and not let ourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery is just as valid today with our rules as it was in the Galatians’ day with the Mosaic law. I previously noted that King John was forced to sign the Magna Charta. However, God gave us our spiritual Magna Charta. Though Paul, He called us to be free: “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” In fact, God does not just call us to freedom, He actually exhorts us to stand firm in our freedom—to resist all efforts to abridge or destroy it. Despite God’s call to be free and His earnest admonition to resist all efforts to curtail it, there is very little emphasis in Christian circles today on the importance of Christian freedom. Just the opposite seems to be true. Instead of promoting freedom, we stress our rules of conformity. Instead of preaching living by grace, we preach living by performance. Instead of encouraging new believers to be conformed to Christ, we subtly insist that they be conformed to our particular style of Christian culture. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

We do not intend to do this and would earnestly deny we are. Yet that is the bottom-line effect of most of our emphases in Christian circles today. For example, many people would react negatively to my quoting only part of Galatians 5.12, “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” Despite the fact that this statement is a complete sentence, they would say, “But that is not all of the verse. Go on to quote the remainder: ‘But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.’” (We seem to forget that verse divisions were not inspired.) The person who reacts that way has made my point. We are much more concerned about someone abusing one’s freedom than we are about one’s guarding it. We are more afraid of indulging the sinful nature than we are of falling into legalism. Yet legalism does indulge the sinful nature because it fosters self-righteousness and religious pride. It also diverts us from the real issues of the Christian life be focusing on external and sometimes trivial rules. “But wo unto the rich who are rich as to the things of the World. For because they are rich they despise the poor, and they persecute the meek, and their hearts are upon their treasures; wherefore, their treasure is their god. And behold, their treasure shall perish with them. And wo unto the deaf that will not hear; for they shall perish. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

“Wo unto the blind that will not see; for they shall perish also. Wo unto the uncircumcised of heart, for a knowledge of their iniquities shall smite them at the last day. Wo unto the lair, for one shall be thrust down to hell. Wo unto the murderer who deliberately killeth, for one shall die. Wo unto them who commit whoredoms, for they shall be thrust down to hell. Yea, who unto those that worship idols, for the devil of all devils delighteth in the. And, in fine, who unto all those who die in their sins; for they shall return to God, and behold his face and remain in their sins. O, my beloved brethren, remember the awfulness in transgressing against that Holy God, and also the awfulness of yielding to the enticings of that cunning one. Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded its life eternal. O, my beloved brethren, give ear to my words. Remember the greatness of the Holy One of Israel. Do not say that I have spoken hard things against you; for if ye do, ye will revile against the truth; for I have spoken the words of your Marker. I know that the words of truth are hard against all uncleanness; but the righteous fear them not for they love the truth and are not shaken. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One. Remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for humans is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before one, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and one employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for one cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name. And whoso knocketh to him will he open; and the wise, and the learned, and they are rich who are puffed up because of their learning, and their wisdom, and their riches—yea, they are they who despiseth; and save they shall cast these things away, and consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he will not open unto them. However, the things of the wise and the prudent shall be hid from them forever—yea, that happiness which is prepared for the saints. O, my beloved brethren, remember my words. Behold, I take off my garments, and I shake them before you; I pray the God of my salvation that he view me with his all-searching eye; wherefore, ye shall know at the last day, when all people shall be judged of their works, that the God of Israel did witness that I shook your iniquities from my soul, and that I stand with brightness before him, and am rid of your blood. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“O, my beloved brethren, turn away from your sins; shake off the chains of him that would bind you fast; come unto that God who is the rock of your salvation. Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear; that ye may not remember your awful guilt in perfectness, and be constrained to exclaim: Holy, holy are thy judgement, O Lord God Almighty—but I know my guilt; I transgressed thy law, and my transgressions are mine; and the devil hath obtained me, that I am a prey to his awful misery. However, behold, my brethren, is it expedient that I should awake you to an awful reality of these things? Would I harrow up your souls if your minds were pure? Would I be plain unto your according to the plainness of the truth if ye were freed from sin? Behold, if ye were holy I would speak unto you of holiness; but as ye are not holy, and ye look upon me as a teacher, it must needs be expedient that I teach you the consequences of sin. Behold, my soul abhorreth sin, and my heart delighteth in righteousness; and I will praise he holy name of my God. Come, my brethren, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and one that hath no money, come buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labour for that which cannot satisfy. Hearken diligently unto me, and remember the words which I have spoken; and come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not, neither can be corrupted, and let your soul delight in fatness. Behold, my beloved brethren, remember the words of your God; pray unto him continually by day, and give thanks unto his holy name by night. Let your hearts rejoice. And behold how great the covenants of the Lord, and how great his condescension unto the children of humans; and because of his greatness, and his grace and mercy, he has promised unto us that our seed shall not utterly be destroyed, according to the flesh, but that he would preserve them; and in future generations they shall become a righteous branch unto the house of Israel. And now, my brethren, I would speak unto you more; but on the morrow I will declare unto you the remainder of my words. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 9.30-54. Depart, O Christian soul, out of this World, in the Name of God the Father Almighty, Who created thee; in the Name of Jesus Christ His Son, who suffered for thee; in the Name of this Holy Ghost, Who has been poured into thee; may thy place be this say in peace, and thy habitation in the Heavenly Jerusalem. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

My God, I feel it is Heaven to please Thee, and to be what thou wouldst have me be. O that I were holy, pure as Christ is pure, perfect as Thy Spirit is perfect! These, I feel, are the best commands in Thy Book, and shall I break them? Must I make them? Am I under such a necessity as long as I live here? Woe, woe is me that I am a sinner, that I grieve this blessed God, who is infinite in goodness and grace! O, if he would punish me for my sins, it would not wound my heart so deep to offend him; but though I sin continually, He continually repeats his kindness to me. At times I feel I could bear any sufferings, but how can I dishonour this glorious God? What shall I do to glorify and worship this best of beings? O that I could consecrate my soul and body to His service, without restraint, forever! O that I could give myself up to him, so as never more to attempt to be my own! Or have any will or affections that are not perfectly conformed to His will and His love! However, alas, I cannot live and not sin. O may Angels glorify Him incessantly, and if possible, prostrate themselves lower before the blessed King of Heaven! I long to bear a part with them in ceaseless praise; but when I have done all I can to eternity I shall not be able to offer more than a small fraction of the homage that the glorious God deserves. Give me a heart full of divine, Heavenly love. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Unto every Chrisitan souls that is afflicted, or plunged into distress, grant Thou mercy, grant relief, grant refreshment. Despise not, O Lord, we beseech Thee, those who cry out in their afflictions, but mercifully relieve their pain with speedy assistance; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Would it Not be Better to Stay Peacefully at Home, and Not Roam about the World Seeking Better Bread Made of Wheat?

April 27, 2020 3:30 am

Nothing else can quite substitute for a new well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They are absolutely free—and worth a fortune. Chicago was a time of great learning for me. I had ample opportunity to test out many hypotheses. I greatly expanded the empirical testing of our therapeutic hypotheses, which we had begun earlier. I developed a rigorous theory of therapy and the therapeutic relationship. I had set forth the necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change, all of them personal attitudes, not professional training. This was a rather presumptuous paper, but it presented hypotheses to be tested and sparked much research over the next fifteen years, which in general been confirming. It was a period when, at the urging of my students, I became acquainted with Martin Buber (first in writings and then personally) and with Soren Kierkegaard. I felt greatly supported in my new approach, which I found to my surprise was a home-grown brand of existential philosophy. Finally, it was a period of great learning in my personal life. A badly bundled therapeutic relationship—really nontherapeutic—thrust me into a deep internal personal crisis, and finally into therapy with one of my colleagues. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

I now learned just what it was like to experience on ne day a tremendous surge of fresh insight, only to seem to lose it all the next in a wave of despair. However, as I slowly came out of this, I at last learned what many people, fortunately, learn first. I learned that not only could I trust clients and staff and students, but I could also trust myself. Slowly I learned to trust the feelings, the ideas, the purposes that continually emerge in me. It was not an easy learning, but a most valuable and continuing one. I found myself becoming much freer, more real, more deeply understanding, not only in my relationships with my clients but also with others. All of these learnings I have mentioned carried over increasingly in my relationships with groups—first the workshops we started in Chicago, then in groups with which I have been so much involved in recent years. They have all been encounter groups, long before the term was coined. I will quickly cover the years at the University of Wisconsin and in La Jolla. At Wisconsin I rediscovered what I had learned in Chicago—that by and large most psychologists are not open to new ideas. Perhaps this is true of me too, though I have struggled against that defensive tendency. However, students, as before, were most responsive. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

In one experience at Wisconsin, I violated one of the learnings I had so painfully acquired, and discovered what disaster that can bring. In the large research tea assembled for the task of studying psychotherapy with schizophrenics, I gave authority and responsibility the climate of close, open, interpersonal communication which is fundamental for carrying such responsibility. Then, as serious crises developed, I made the fatal mistake of trying to draw back into my own hands the authority I had given the group. Rebellion and chaos were the very understandable results. It was one of the most painful lessons I have every learned—a lesion in how not to carry on participative management of enterprise. In La Jolla, my experience has been much happier. A highly congenial group eventually formed the Center for Studies of the Person, a most unusual and exciting experiment. I will describe only its interpersonal aspects, because it would be impossible to describe all the activities of its member, which range from Kenya to Rome to Ireland, from New Jersey to Colorado to Seattle, from psychotherapy to writing to esoteric research, from consulting with organizations to leading of all kinds, from learning group facilitation to igniting revolutions in educational methods. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Psychologically, we are a close community, supporting each other but criticizing each other just as openly. Although our director has routine responsibilities, no one is in authority over anyone else. Everyone can do as one wishes, alone or in concert with others. Everyone is responsible for one’s own support. Currently we have only one small grant, and that from a private foundation. We do not like the strings—often initially invisible—that are attached to large or government grants. There is absolutely nothing holding us together except a common interest in the dignity and capacity of persons and the continuing possibility of deep and real communication with each other. To me it is a great experiment in building a functioning group—a nonorganization really—entirely based on the strength of interpersonal sharing. However, I could easily go one too long in my enthusiasm. There has been one other input to my learning which I should like to mention. It was first brought to my attention many years ago by Leona Tyler, who, in a personal letter, pointed out to me that my thinking and action seemed to be something of a bridge between Eastern and Western thought. This was a surprising idea, but I find that in more recent years I have enjoyed some of the teaching of Buddhism, of Zen, and especially the sayings of Lao-tse, the Chinese sage who lived some twenty-five centuries ago. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Let me quote a few lines of Lao-tse’s thoughts to which I resonate very deeply: “It is as though he listened and such listening as his enfolds us in a silence what we are meant to be.” One statement combines two of my favourite thinkers. Martin Buber endeavours to explain the Taoist principle of wu–wei, which is really the action of the whole being, but so effortless wen it is most effective that it is often called the principle of “nonaction,” a rather misleading term. Dr. Buber, in explain this concept, says: “To interfere with the life of things means to harm both of them and oneself…He who imposes himself has the small, manifest might; he who does not impose himself has the great, secret might. The perfected man…does not interfere in the life of beings, he does not impose himself on them, but he ‘helps all beings to their freedom (Loa-tse).’ Though his unity, he leads them, too unity, he liberates their nature and their destiny he releases Tao in them.” I supposed that my effort with people has increasingly been to liberate “their nature and their destiny.” Or, if one is seeking a definition of an effective group facilitator, one need look no further than Lao-tse: “A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him…but of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will also say, ‘We did this ourselves.’” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

However, perhaps my favourite saying, which sums up many of my deeper beliefs, is another from Lao-tse: “If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves, if I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves, if I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves, if I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves.” I will admit that this saying is an oversimplification yet for me it contains the sort of truth which we have not yet appreciated in our Western culture. The intensity of the feeling of inner coercion in some in Western culture depends on the extent to which the personality is cramped by the authoritative control of the idealized image. It would be hard to overestimate this pressure. It is worse than any external coercion because the latter permits inner freedom to be retained. Patients are for the most part unaware of the feeling, but one can gauge its power by their relief when it is removed and a measure of inner freedom acquired. The coercion may be externalized on the one hand by imposing pressure upon others. This can have the same outward effect as a neurotic craving for domination, but though both may be present they differ in that coercion which represents an externalization of inner pressure is not primarily a demand for person obedience. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The inner pressure consists chiefly in imposing he same standards upon others as those under which the person oneself chafes—and with the same disregard for their happiness. Puritan psychology is a well-known illustration of this process. Equally important is the externalization of this inner compulsion in the form of hypersensitivity to anything in the outside World that even faintly resembles duress. As every observant person knows, such hypersensitivity is common. Not all of it stems from self-imposed coercion. Usually there is an element of experiencing one’s own power drive in others and resenting it. In detached personalities we think primarily of the compulsive insistence upon independence that would necessarily make them sensitive to any outside pressure. Externalization of an unconscious self-imposed constraint is a source that is more hidden and more often neglected in analysis. This is particularly regrettable since it often constitutes an influential undercurrent in the relationship between patient and analyst. The patient is likely to keep on invalidating every suggestion made by the analyst even after the more obvious sources of one’s sensitivity on this score have been analyzed. The subversive battle set afoot in this even is all the more severe because the analyst actually does want to bring about change in the patient. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

One’s honest assertion that one merely wants to help the patient retrieve oneself and the inner spring of one’s life is of little avail. Might one, the patient, not succumb to some inadvertently exerted influence? The fact is that since one does not know what one “really” is, one cannot possibly be selective in what one accepts or rejects, and no amount of care on the analyst’s part to refrain from imposing any personally held belief will make a difference. And since one also does not know that one labours under an inner coercion which has set one in a certain pattern, one can only rebel indiscriminately against every external intent to change one. Needless to say, this futile battle appears not only in the analytical situation but is bound to occur in greater or less degree in any close relationship. It is the analysis of this inner process that will finally the ghost. To complicate matters, the more a person tends to comply with the exacting demands of one’s idealized image the more will one externalize such compliance. One will be eager to measure up to what the analyst—or anybody else, for that matter—expects of one or what one believes they expect of one. One may appear amenable or even gullible but at the same time one will pile up secret resentment against this “coercion.” The result may be that one will eventually come to see everyone in a dominating role and be universally resentful. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

What, then, does a person gain by externalizing one’s inner constraint? As long as one believes it comes from outside one can rebel against it, even if only by way of mental reservation. Similarly, a restriction externally imposed can be avoided; an illusion of freedom can be maintained. However, more significant is the factor cited above: to admit the inner coercion would mean to admit that one is not one’s idealized image, with all the consequences that entails. It is an interesting question whether and to what extent the strain of this inner compulsion, too, is expressed in physical symptoms. My own impression is that it is a contributing factor in asthma, high blood pressure, and constipation, but my experience here is limited. It remains for us to discuss the externalization of the various features that stand in contrast to one’s idealized image. This on the whole effected by simple projection—that is, by experiencing them in others or by holding others responsible for them. The two processes do not necessarily go together. In the following examples we may have to repeat certain things we have already said in this connection, as well as others that are commonly known, but the illustrations will help us to arrive at a deeper understanding of the meaning of projection. This method has become famous, the so-called “psychology of depth.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

It leads us from the surface of our self-knowledge into levels where things are recorded which we knew nothing about on the surface of consciousness. It shows us traits of character which contradict everything that we believed we knew about ourselves. I can help us to find the way, because it cannot guide us to the deepest ground of our being and of all being, the depth of life itself. The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheists; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth of the World and depth of our souls. However, we are only in a World through a community of people. And we can discover our souls only through he mirror of those who look at us. There is no dept of life without the depth of the common life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

We usually live in history as much on the surface as we live our individual lives. We understand our historical existence as it appears to us, and not as it really is. The stream of daily news, the waves of daily propaganda, and the tides of conventions and sensationalism keep our minds occupied. The noise of these shallow waters prevents us from listening to the sounds out of the depth, to the sounds of what really happens in the ground of our social structure, in the longing hearts of the masses, and in the struggling minds of those who are sensitive to historical changes. Our ears are as deaf to the cries out of the social depth as they are to the cries out of the depth of our souls. We leave the bleeding victims of our social system as lone, after we have hurt them without hearing their cries in the noise of our daily lives, as we do our own bleeding souls. We believed once that we were living in a period of unavoidable progress to a better humanity. However, in the dept od our social structure the forces of destruction had already gathered strength. It once seemed as if human reason had conquered nature and history. However, this was surface only; and in the depth of our community the rebellion against the surface had already begun. We produced ever better and ever more perfect tools and means for the life of humankind. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

However, in the depth they had already turned into means and tools for human’s self-destruction. Decades ago prophetic minds looked into the depth. Painters expressed their feeling of the coming catastrophe by disrupting the surface of humans and nature in their pictures. Poets used strange, offensive words and rhythms in order to throw light upon the contrast between what seemed to be and what really was. Beside the psychology of depth, a sociology of depth arose. However, it is only now, in the decade in which the most horrible social Earthquake of all times has grasped the whole of humankind, that the eyes of the nations have been opened to the depth below them and to the truth about their historical existence. Yet still there are people, even in high places, who turn their eyes from this depth, and who wish to return to the disrupted surface as through nothing had happened. However, we who know the depth of what has happened should not be content to rest upon the level that we have reached. We might become despairing and self-despising. Let us rather plunge more deeply into the ground of our historical life, into the ultimate depth of history. The name of this infinite and inexhaustible ground of history is God. That is what the word means, and it is that to which the words Kingdom of God and Divine Providence point. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

And if these words do not have much meaning for you, translate them, and speak of the depth of history, of the ground and aim of our social life, and of what you take seriously without reservation in your moral and political activities. Perhaps you should call this depth hope, simply hope. For if you find hope in the ground of history, you are untied with the great prophets who were able to look into the depth of their times, who tried to escape it, because they could not stand the horror of their visions, and who yet had the strength to look to an even deeper level and there to discover hope. Their hope did not make them feel ashamed. And no hope shall make us ashamed, if we do not find it on the surface where fools cultivate vain expectations, but rather if we find it in the depth where those with trembling and contrite hearts receive the strength of a hope which is truth. These last words shall lead us to the other meaning that the words “deep” and “depth” have in both secular and religious language: the depth of suffering which is the door, the only door, to the depth of truth. That fact is obvious. It is comfortable to live on the surface so long as it remains unshaken. It is painful to break away from it and to descend into an unknown ground. The tremendous amount of resistance against that act in every human beings and the many pretexts invented to avoid the road into the dept are natural. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The pain of looking into one’s own depth is to intense for most people. They would rather return to the shaken and devastated surface of their former lives and thoughts. The same is true of social groups who create all kinds of ideologies and rationalizations in order to resist those who would lead them to the road to the depth of their social existence. They would rather cover the breaches in their surface with small remedies than to dig into the ground. The prophets of al time can tell us of the hating resistance which they provoke by their daring to uncover the depths of social judgment and social hope. And who can really bear the ultimate depth, the burning fire in the ground of all being, without saying with prophet, “Woe unto me! For I am undone. For mine eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts!” “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery…You, my brothers, were called to be free. However, do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love,” reports Galatians 5.1,13. In the year 1215, English barons forced King John to sign a historic document, the Magna Charta, giving his assent to a charter of civil liberties for the English people. He did not to this freely and voluntarily, but actually under duress from the English nobles who had confronted him about his totalitarian and unjust rule. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

The apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians has been called the great charter of religious freedom, the Christian Declaration of Independence, and the Magna Charta of the church. The freedom set forth in Galatians is not freedom from God, but from those who insist on some form of legalism in the life of a believer. The legalism the Galatian believers were in danger of succumbing to was the teaching that believers must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be saved. Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians to refute that heresy. Yes, it was heresy, and Paul felt so strongly about it he called down a divine curse on those who were teaching it: “But even if we or an Angel from Heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” reports Galatians 1.8. Paul took a strong stand for the cause of freedom against this form of legalism when he wrote, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery,” reports Galatians 5.1. And he was calling them from this form of legalism when he said, “You, my brothers, were called to be free,” reports Galatians 5.13. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

We have gotten beyond the Galatian brand of legalism today. We have not resurrected circumcisions as a requirement for salvation, and we are clear that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ apart from keeping the law. Instead, we have developed another brand of legalism, a brand that is concerned, not with salvation, but with how we live the Christian life. I call this “evangelical legalism” (a contradiction in terms, I realize—nevertheless the phrase fits the problem). Here is how I describe our form of legalism. Legalism is, first of all, anything we do or do not do in order to earn favour with God. It is concerned with rewards to be gained or penalties to be avoided. This is a legalism we force on ourselves. Second, legalism insists on conformity to humanmade religious rules and requirements, which are often unspoken but are nevertheless very real. To use a more common expression, it requires conformity to the “do’s and do nots” of our particular Christian circle. We force this legalism on others or allow others to force it on us. “YEA, for thus saith the Lord: Have I put thee away, or have I cast thee off forever? For thus saith the Lord: Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement? To whom have I put thee away, or to which of my creditors have I sold you? Yea, to whom have I sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

“Wherefore, when I came, there was no man; when I called, yea, there was none to answer. O house of Israel, is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem, or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make their rivers a wilderness and their fish to stink because the waters are dried up, and they die because of thirst. I clothe the Heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering. The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season unto thee, O house of Israel. When ye are weary he waketh morning by morning. He waketh mine ear to hear as the learned. He Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiter, and my cheeks to them that plucked off some of the hair. I hid not y face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded. Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. And the Lord is near, and he justifieth me. Who will content with me? Let us stand together. Who is mine adversary? Let him come near me, and I will smite him with the strength of my mouth. For the Lord God will help me. And all they who shall condemn me, behold, all they shall wax old as a ferment, and the moth shall eat them up. Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

“Behold all ye that kindle fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks which ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand—ye shall lie down in sorrow,” 2 Nephi 7.1-11. Giver of all, another day is ended and I take my place beneath my great redeemer’s cross, where healing streams continually descend, where balm is poured into every wound, where I wash anew in all-cleansing blood, assured that Thou seest in me no spots of sin. Yet a little while and I shall go to Thy home and be no more seen; help me to gird up the loins of my mind, to quicken my step, to speed as if each moment were my last, that my life be joy, my death glory. I thank Thee for the temporal blessings of this World—the refreshing air, the light of the Sun, the food that renews strength, the raiment that clothes, the dwelling that shelters, the sleep that gives rest, the starry canopy of night, the Summers breeze, the flowers’ sweetness, the music of following streams, the happy endearments of family, kindred, friends. Things animate, things inanimate, minister to my comfort. My cup runs over. Suffer me not to be insensible to these daily mercies. Thy hand bestows blessings: Thy power averts evil. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

I bring my tribute of thanks for spiritual graces, the full warmth of faith, the cheering presence of Thy Spirit, the strength of Thy restraining will, Thy spiking of hell’s artillery. Blessed be my sovereign Lord! Almighty and everlasting God, the Guardian of souls, Who in Thy love dost correct, by scourging, those whom Thou receives; we call upon Thee, O Lord, that it may please Thee to bestow Thy healing on the soul of Thy servants, who suffer in their bodies from weakness, and the forces of pains, and the pangs of infirmity. Grant them, O Lord, Thy grace, that their soul, in the hour of its departure from the body, many attain to be presented by the hands of holy Angels, clear from all stains of deadly sin, unto Thee Who gavest it; through our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast been pleased to breathe into a being a soul according to Thy likeness, do Thou, while at Thy bidding dust returns to dust, command Thine image to be associated with Thy Saints and elect in an everlasting home; and gently and tenderly receive it as it returns from the land of Egypt unto Thee, and send Thy holy Angels to meet it, and show it the way of righteousness, and open the gates of Thy glory. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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But the Flower-Fed Buffaloes of the Spring Left Us Long Ago!

April 25, 2020 12:31 am

Plant the seeds of expectation in your mind; cultivate thoughts that anticipate achievement. Believe in yourself as being capable of overcoming all obstacle and weaknesses. There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them come about through encouragement from someone else. Encouragement is oxygen for the soul. There was a brief two-day seminar with Otto Rank, and I found his therapy (not in his theory) he was emphasizing some of the things I had begun to learn. I felt stimulated and confirmed. I employed a social worker, trained in Rankian “relationship therapy” at the Philadelphia School of Social Work, and learned much from her. So my views shifted more an more. At Ohio State University, I was greatly enriched as I presented my views of clinical work to bright and questioning graduate students. Here too, I began to realize that I was saying something new, perhaps even original, about counseling and psychotherapy. My dream of recording therapeutic interviews came true, helping to focus my interest on the effects of different responses in the interview. This led to a heavy emphasis on technique—the so-called nondirective technique. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

However, I was finding that this new-found trust in my client and this capacity for exploring and resolving his problems reached out uncomfortably into other areas. If I trusted my clients, why did I not trust my student? If this was fine for the individual in trouble, why not for a staff group facing problems? I found that I had embarked not on a new method of therapy, but a sharply different philosophy of living and relationships. Controversies over the multiculturalism have been bitter and divisive. Proponents claim that a multicultural curriculum, for example, can facilitate an appreciation for diversity, increase tolerance, and improve relations between and among racial and ethic groups. Opponents claim that multicularualists devalue or relativize core national values and beliefs, shamelessly promote “identity politics,” and unwittingly increase racial tensions. Multiculturalism is often posed as the celebration of “differences” and unique form of material culture expressed, for example, in music, food, dance, and holidays. Such an approach tends to level the important differences and contradictions within and among racial and ethnic groups. Different groups possess different forms of power—the power to control resources, the power to push political agenda, and the power to culturally represent themselves and other groups. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

Different groups also have distinct perceptions of group position, which are related to, and implicated, in the organization of power. Some scholars and activists have defined racism as “prejudice plus power.” Using this formula, they argue that people of colour cannot be racist because they do not have power. However, things are not that simple. In the post-Civil Rights era, some marginalized racial groups have carved out a degree of power in select urban areas—particularly with respect to administering social services and distributing economic resources. This has led, in cities like Oakland and Miami, to conflicts between different ethnic groups over educational programs, business opportunities, and political power. We need to acknowledge and examine the historical and contemporary differences in power that different groups possess. White Americans do not experience their ethnicity as a definitive aspect of their social identity. Rather, they perceive it dimly and irregularly, picking and choosing among its varied strands that allow them to exercise an “ethnic option.” Ethnicity is flexible, symbolic, and voluntary for most White respondents in ways that it is not for non-White. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

The loose affiliation with specific European ethnicities does not necessarily suggest the demise of any coherent group consciousness and identity. In the twilight of ethnicity, White racial identity may increase in salience. Indeed, in an increasingly diverse workplace and society. Whites experience a profound racialization. The racialization process foe White is evident on many college/university campuses as White student encounter a heightened awareness of race, which calls their own identity into question as every culture in America tries to define what is the true American race. With national security debates and security measure being put in place, Latino are trying harder to assert their heritage as the true Americans. Some Whites are feeling isolated because they have been taught to be more accepting of other cultures, while they see their heritage being stripped away with antique statues being ripped down and destroyed. Other White see this as a time to ban together and assert their supremacy by joining law enforcement and targeting other ethnic groups to ensure their demise. Blacks feel they never had the choice to be American or not and have been used to support and build this country and are being replaced by preferred immigrants who get treated better and more government support than anyone else. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

For many Blacks, they have always felt like an outside group, while they understand that Britney Spears is the American Dream. She represents the true American with her blonde hair, blue eyes and red blood. In fact, the colours of the flag establish White identity, the red is for their blood, the white for their blonde hair and the blue for the colour of their eyes. And due to the fact that Britney Spears is one of the most influential and noticeable Americans Worldwide, many believe this is why she has suffered so many hardships. People are mad at Americans and America and took their frustration out of her. However, it is not only because of her heritage, but also because she achieved the American Dream at a young age by working hard, while other face oppression they cannot seem to overcome. Asians are kind of an outlier because their test scores, incomes, and educational levels, on average, tend to the be the highest of any group and their families tend to support each other, which creates a level of envy and people blame them for disasters they may not be responsible for. However, Eastern Europeans are becoming known for appealing to Japan for their IT skills. While America borrows heavily from China, if we are so concerned about national security, would it not make more sense to print our own money and potentially face hyperinflation, than to sell out and give other countries influence in our government? #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

Focus group interviews with White students at the University of California, Berkeley, reveals many of the themes and dilemmas of White identity in the current period: the “absence” of a clear culture and identity, the perceived “disadvantages” of being White with respect to the distribution of resources, and the stigma of being perceived as the “oppressors of the nation.” Such comments underscore the new problematic meanings attached to “White,” and debates about the meaning will continue, and perhaps deepen, in the years to come, fueled by such social issues as affirmative action, English-only initiatives, and immigrations policies. President Trump is having such a hard time keep the nation together because democrats are playing the victim cards and trying to seem like they are the saviour or our nation by pretending to care about people who have illegally immigrated to America. When the only reason they are supporting people, who have illegally immigrated, is to get more votes and stay in office. It is the same reason American had its first “Black” president and why Joe Biden is running with a woman. These are gimmicks to appeal to marginalized groups to stay in power. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

Racial meanings are profoundly influenced by state definitions and discursive practices. They are also shaped by interaction with prevailing forms of gender and class formation. An examination of both these topics reveals the fundamental instability of racial categories, their historically contingent character, and the ways they articulate with other axes of stratification and “difference.” Extending this understanding, it is crucial to relate to racial categories and meanings to concepts of racism. The idea of “race” and its persistence as a social category is only given meaning in a social order structured by forms of inequality—economic, political, and cultural—that are organized, to a significant degree, along racial lines. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object is persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Power is a collective. The individual only has power in so far as one ceases to be an individual. Alone—free—the human being is always defeated. However, if one can make a complete, utter submission, if one can escape from one’s identity, if one can merge oneself to a political party so one is that party, the one is all-powerful and immortal. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

Power is power over human beings. Over the body—but, above all, over the mind. Obedience is not enough. Unless one is suffering, how can you be sure he or she is obeying your will and not one’s own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of World we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the Utopias that the old reformers imagined. It is a World of fear, social distance, treachery, and torment. A World of trampling and being trampled upon, a World which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our World will be progress toward more pain. The ancient civilizations were founded upon justice and love. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our World there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy—everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which survived from before the Revolution. We have cut links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. Are you beginning to realize what that World will be like? The fictional news media is already playing ticks with reality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

The process of creating an unreal reality is conscious, or else it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. The media and many politicians use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. The lie is always a leap ahead of the truth. All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grow soft. This is why democrats make illegal immigration seem like it is about helping innocent women and children, but with people coming into this nation without being screened, you have no idea what diseases or viruses they may be carrying nor what their true purposes are. And the same people that support illegal immigration and the same exact people that want to keep Americans locked in their homes to “flatten the curve,” of economic prosperity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Governments fail because either they become stupid and arrogant or fail to adjust themselves to the changing circumstances, and were overthrown, or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force, and once again were overthrown. They fell, that is to say, either through consciousness or through unconsciousness. If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes. World-conquest is believed in most firmly by those who know it to be impossible. Manifest destiny tells us that the World will be one big American Dream, and do you want it to be a World with too many government restrictions and social policies or one of Capitalism, where people are allowed to have freedom, work, earn money and achieve success? Or do you want the government to limit your success and make you shared the fruits of your labour with people who sit around eating, sleeping, rolling around in the bed gossiping, and partying all night? Some of these issues I worked out while at Ohio State, and when I was given an opportunity to start a new Counseling Center at the University of Chicago, setting my own policies and selecting my own staff, I was ready to formulate and act on what was for me a new approach to human relationships. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

I have come to trust the capacity of persons to explore and understand themselves and their troubles, and to resolve those problems, in any close, continuing relationship where I can provide a climate of real warmth and understanding. I am going to venture to put the same kind of trust in a staff group, endeavouring to build an atmosphere in which each is responsible for the actions of the group as a whole, and where the group has a responsibility to each individual. Authority has been given to me, and I am going to give it completely to the group. I am going to experiment with putting trust in students, in class groups, to choose their own directions and to evaluate their progress in terms of their own choosing. The depth of thought is a part of the depth of life. Most of our life continues on the surface. We are enslaved by the routine of our daily lives, in work and pleasure, in business and recreation. We are conquered by innumerable hazards, both good and evil. We are more drive than driving. We do not stop to look at the height above us, or to the depth below us. We are always moving forward, although usually in a circle, which finally beings us back to the place from which we fist moved. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

We are in constant motion and never stop to plunge into the depth. We talk and talk and never listen to the voices speaking to our depth and from our depth. We accept ourselves as we appear to ourselves, and do not care what we really are like. Like a tidal wave, we injure our souls by the speed with which we move on the surface; and then we rush away, leaving our bleeding souls alone. We miss, therefore, our depth and our true life. And it is only when the picture that we have of ourselves breaks down completely, only when we find ourselves acting against all the expectations we had derived from that picture, and only when an Earthquake shakes and disrupts the surface of our self-knowledge, that we are willing to look into a deeper level of our being. Rage at oneself is externalized in three main ways. Where giving vent to hostility is uninhibited, anger is easily thrust outward. It is turned then against others and appears either as irritability in general or as a specific irritation directed at the very faults in others that the person hates in oneself. An illustration may make this clear. A patient complained of her husband’s indecision. Since the indecision concerned a trivial matter, her vehemence was directly out of proportion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

Knowing her own indecision, I suggested that she had revealed how mercilessly she condemned this in herself. Whereupon she suddenly felt an insane rage, with her impulse to tear herself to pieces. The fact that in her idealized image she was a tower of strength made it impossible for her to tolerate any weakness in herself. Characteristically enough, this reaction, in spite of its highly dramatic nature, was completely forgotten at the next interview. She had seen the externalization in a flash but was not yet ready to relinquish it. The second way takes the form of an incessant conscious or unconscious fear or expectation that the faults which are intolerable to oneself will infuriate others. A person may be so convinced that certain behaviour on one’s part will arouse profound hostility that one may be honestly bewildered if no hostile response is encountered. A patient, for instance, whose idealized image contained elements of wanting to be as good as Prince Lestat in Anne Rice’s Blood Canticle, was greatly astonished to find that whenever she took a firm stand or even expressed anger, people like her better than when she acted like a saint. As one would guess from this kind of idealized image, the patient’s predominant tend was compliance. Issuing originally from her need for closeness to others, it was greatly reinforced by her excitation of hostile response. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

Increased compliance is in fact one of the major consequences of this form of externalization, and illustrates how neurotic trends continually augment each other in a vicious circle. Compulsive compliance is increased because the idealized image, containing in this configuration elements of saintliness, drives the person to greater self-effacement. The resulting hostile impulses then arouse rage against the self. And the externalization of the rage, leading to an increased fear of others, in turn reinforces compliance. The third way of externalizing rage is to focus on bodily disorders. Rage against the self, when not experienced as such, apparently created physical tensions of considerable severity, which may appear as intestinal maladies, headaches, fatigue, and so on. It is illuminating to see how all these symptoms disappear with the speed of lightening as soon as the rage itself is consciously felt. One may be in doubt whether to call these physical manifestations externalization or to regard them merely as physiological consequences of repressed rage. However, one can hardly separate the manifestations from the use patients make of them. As a rule they are more than eager to ascribe their psychic troubles to their bodily ailments and these in turn to some external provocation. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

There is nothing psychically wrong with them, they are interested to prove; they just suffer from intestinal trouble due to wrong diet, or from fatigue due to overwork, or from rheumatism due to damp air, and so on. As to what the neurotic accomplishes by externalizing one’s rage, the same may be said here as in the case of self-contempt. One additional consideration should, however, be mentioned. The lengths to which such patients go will not be fully understood unless one is cognizant of the real danger attached to these self-destructive impulses. The patient cited in the first example had only a momentary impulse to hear herself to pieces, but psychotics may really carry it through and mutilate themselves. There is a self-destructive instinct. If not for externalization, it is probable that many more suicides would occur. It is understandable that Dr. Freud, being aware of the power of self-destructive impulses, should have postulated a self-destructive instinct (death instinct)—though by this concept he barred the way to a real understanding, and so to an effective therapy. The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth, not the road to our death. It has been described in innumerably different ways. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

However, all those who have been concerned—mystic and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated people—with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found that they were not what they believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their very lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth. All things are said to be seen in God and all things are judged in Him, because by the participation of His light, we know and judge all things; for the light of natural reason itself is participation of the divine light; as likewise we are said to see and judge of sensible things in the Sun, for example, by the Sun’s light. The lessons of instruction can only be seen as it were by their own Sun, namely God. As therefore in order to see a sensible object, it is not necessary to see the substance of the Sun, so in like manner to see any intelligible object, it is not necessary to see the essence of God. Intellectual vision is of the things which are in the soul by their essence, as intelligible things are in the intellect. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

And thus God is in the souls of the blessed; not this is He in our soul, but by presence, essence and power. Jacob recounts Jewish history: the Babylonian captivity and return; the ministry and crucifixion of the Holy One of Israel; the help received from the Gentiles; and the Jews’ latter0day restoration when they believe in the Messiah. About 559-545 Before Christ. “The words of Jacob, the brother of Nephi, which he spake unto the people of Nephi: Behold, my beloved brethren, I, Jacob, having been called of God and ordained after the manner of his holy order, and having been consecrated by my brother Nephi, unto whom ye look as a king or a protector, and on whom ye depend for safety, behold ye know that I have spoken unto you exceedingly many things. Nevertheless, I speak unto you again; for I am desirous for the welfare of your souls. Yea, mine anxiety is great for you; and ye yourselves know that it ever has been. For I have exhorted you will all diligence; and I have taught you the words of my father; and I have spoken unto you concerning all things which are written, from the creation of the World. And now, behold, I would speak unto you concerning things which are, and which are to come; wherefore, I will read you the words of Isaiah. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

“And they are the words which my brother desired that I should speak unto you. And I speak unto you for your sakes, that ye may learn and glorify the name of your God. And now, the words which I shall read are they which Isaiah spake concerning all the house of Israel; wherefore, they may be likened unto you, for ye are of the house of Israel. And there are many things which have been spoke by Isaiah which may be likened unto you, because ye are of the house of Israel. And now, these are the words: Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their faces towards the Earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord; for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me. And now I, Jacob, would speak somewhat concerning these words. For behold, the Lord has shown me that those who were at Jerusalem, from whence we came, have been slain and carried away captive. Nevertheless, the Lord has shown unto me that they should return again and again. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

“And he also has shown unto me that the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, should manifest himself unto them in the flesh; and after he should manifest himself they should scourge him and crucify him, according to the words of the Angel who spoke unto me. And after they have hardened their hearts and stiffened their necks against the Holy One of Israel, behold, the judgments of the Holy One of Israel shall come upon them. And the day cometh that they shall be smitten and afflicted. Wherefore, after they are driven to and fro, for thus saith the Angel, many shall be afflicted in the flesh, and shall not be suffered to perish, because of the prayers of the faithful; they shall be scattered, and smitten, and hated; nevertheless, the Lord will be merciful unto them that when they shall come to the knowledge of their Redeemer, they shall be gathered together again to the lands of their inheritance. And blessed are the Gentiles, they of whom the prophet has written; for behold, if it so be that they shall repent and fight not against Zion, and do not unite themselves to the great and abominable church, they shall be saved; for the Lord God will fulfill his covenants which he has made unto his children; and for this cause the prophet has written these things. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

“Wherefore, they that fight against Zion and the covenant people of the Lord shall lick of the dust of their feet; and the people of the Lord shall not be ashamed. For the people of the Lord are they who wait for him; for they still wait for the coming of the Messiah. And behold, according to the words of the prophet, the Messiah will set himself again the second time to recover them; wherefore, he will manifest himself unto them in power and great glory, unto the destruction of their enemies, when that day cometh when they shall believe in him; and none will he destroy that believe in him. And they that believe not in him shall be destroyed, both by fire, and by tempest, and by Earthquakes, and by bloodsheds, and by pestilence, and by famine. And they shall know that the Lord is God, the Holy One of Israel. For shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered? However, thus saith the Lord: Even the captives of the might shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered; for the Mighty God shall deliver his covenant people. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“For thus saith the Lord: I will content with them that contendeth with thee—and I will feed them that oppress thee, with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood as with sweet wine; and all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob,” reports 2 Nephi 6.1-18. Lord, have mercy upon your children. Christ, have mercy upon your people. Lord, have mercy upon humanity. O Christ, hear us. Be merciful, please Spare us, O Lord. Be merciful, Deliver us, O Lord. From all evil, O Lord, deliver us. From our sin; from unholy thoughts; from pain and anguish; from the snares of the devil; from the power of demons; from all tribulation at this time; from everlasting damnation; from Thine exceedingly dreadful wrath; by the mystery of Thy holy Incarnation; by Thine Advent; by Thy Nativity; by Thy Baptism; by Thy Passion and Cross; by Thy glorious Resurrection; by Thy wonderful Ascension; by the grace of the Holy Ghost the Comforter; in the hour of his departure; we sinners do beseech Thee to hear us; that Thou remove from us Thy wrath; We beseech Thee to hear us, O Lord. That it may please Thee to give us a humbled and contrite heart; that it may please Thee to give us a fountain of tears, that it may please Thee to give us perfect faith, hope, and love. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

We beseech thee that Thou wouldest take away from us all murmuring and impatience; that it may please Thee mercifully to raise us from the bed of sickness; that it may please Thee to restore us in health and safety to Thy holy Church; that it may please Thee to give us pardon of all sins; that it may please Thee to give us Thy grace; that it may please Thee to give us eternal life; that it may please Thee to bless us with Thy holy right hand; Son of God; O lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the World; have mercy upon us, and upon the Earth, O Lord. O Lover of Thy people, Thou hast placed my whole being in the hands of Jesus, my redeemer, commander, husband, friend, and carest for me in Him. Keep me holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners; may I not know the voice of strangers, but go to Him where He is, and follow where He leads. Thou hast bathed me once for all in the sin-removing fountain, cleanse me now from this day’s defilement, from its faults, deficiencies of virtue, harmful extremes, that I may exhibit a perfect character in Jesus. O Master, who didst wash the disciples’ feet, please be very patient with me, be very condescending to my faults, go on with me till Thy great work in me is completed. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

I desire to conquer self in every respect, to overcome the body with its affections and lusts, to keep under my flesh, to guard my humahood from all grosser sins, to check the refined power of my natural mind, to live entirely to Thy glory, to be deaf to unmerited censure and the praise of humans. Nothing can hurt my new-born inner human, it cannot be smitten or die; nothing can mar the dominion of Thy Spirit within me; it is enough to have Thy approbation and that of my conscience. Keep me humble, dependent, supremely joyful, as calm and quiet as a nursing child, yet earnest and active. I wish not so much to do as to be, and I long to be like Jesus; if Thou dost make me right I shall be right; Lord, I belong to Thee, make me worthy of Thyself, please. Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural know can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. However, our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God; because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause. Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefor can His essence be seen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

However, because they are His effect and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God, whether He exits, and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him, as first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him. Hence we know that God’s relationship with creatures so far as to be the cause of them all; also that creatures differ from Him, inasmuch as He is not in any way part of what is caused by Him; and that creatures are not removed from God by reason of any defect on His part, but because He superexceeds them all. Reason cannot reach up to simple form, so as to know “what it is,” but it can know “whether it is.” God is known by natural knowledge through the images of his effects. As the knowledge of God’s essence is by grace, it belongs only to the good; but the knowledge of Hum by natural reason can belong both good and bad; and hence Augustine says, retracting what he had said before: “I do not approve what I said in prayer, ‘God who willest that only the pure should know truth.’ For it can be answered that many who are not pure can know many truths,” for example by natural reason. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

Cresleigh Homes

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Catch them doing something right! If you can catch people doing something well, no matter how small it may seem, and beneficially reinforce them for doing it, they will continue to grow in a righteous direction.
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So the Heart be Right, it is No Matter which Way the Head Lieth!

April 24, 2020 2:05 am

Nothing improves a person’s hearing more than praise. An ounce of praise can accomplish more than a ton of faultfinding. And if one looks for it, something worthy of praise can be found in most individuals. If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are. The future of humans, unless history changes courses, people all over the World will lose their most human qualities, will become soulless automatons, and will not even be aware of it. The moral callousness of the First World War was only the beginning. However, many people are still wondering can human nature be changed in such a way that humans will forget their longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love—that is to say, can humans forget that they are human? Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one? Political parties do not even pretend that their system is intended to make individuals happier, because humans, being frail and cowardly creatures, want to escape from freedom and are unable to face the truth. The leaders are aware of the fact that they themselves have only one aim, and that is to power. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

To our leaders, power is not a means; it is an end. And power means the capacity to inflict unlimited pain and suffering to another human being. Power, then, for them creates reality, it creates truth. In my graduate training in clinical psychology, I was learning two major ways of relating to individuals who come for help. At Teachers College the approach was to understand about the individual through test, measurement, diagnostic interviews, and perspective advice as to treatment. This cold approach was, however, suffused with warmth by the personality of Dr. Leta Hollingworth, who taught us more by her person than by her lectures. Later, when I interned at the then new and affluent Institute for Child Guidance, I was exposed to a very different atmosphere. Dominated as it was by psychoanalysts, I learned more about the individual. I learned that one cannot be understood without an exhaustive case history seventy-five pages or more in length, going into all the personality dynamics of the grandparents, the parents, the aunts and uncles, and finally the “patient” oneself—possible birth trauma, manner of weaning, degree of dependency, sibling relationships, and on and on. Then there was the elaborate testing, including the newly imported Rorschach, and finally many interviews with the children before deciding what sort of treatment one should have. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

It nearly always came out the same: the child was treated psychoanalytically by the psychiatrist, the mother was dealt with in the same fashion by the social worker, and occasionally, the psychologist was asked to tutor the child. Yet I carried on my first therapy case there. It started with tutoring but developed into more and more personal interviews, and I discovered the thrill that comes from observing changes in a person’s behaviour. Whether those were due to my enthusiasm or my methods I cannot say. As I look back, I realize that my interests in interviewing and in therapy certainly grew in part out of my early loneliness. Here was a socially approved way of getting really close to individuals and thus filling some of the hungers I had undoubtedly felt. The therapeutic interview also offered a chance of becoming close without having to go through what was to me a long and painful process of gradual and deepening acquaintance. By the time I have completed my work in New York, I knew—with all the assurance of the newly trained—how to deal with people professionally. In spite of the wide difference between Teachers College and the Institute, they both helped me arrive at somewhat the same formula. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The formula can be stated as follows: “I will gather an enormous amount of data about this individual: one’s history, one’s intelligence, one’s special abilities, one’s personality. Out of all this I can form an elaborate diagnostic formulation as to the cause of one’s present behaviour, one’s personal and social resource for dealing with one’s situation, and the prognosis for one’s future. I will endeavour to interpret all this in simple language to the responsible agencies, to the parents, and to the child if one is capable of understanding it. I will make sound suggestions which, if carried out, will change the behaviour, and I will reinforce those suggestions by repeated contact. In all of this I remain thoroughly objective, professional, and personally aloof from these persons in trouble, except insofar as personal warmth is necessary to build a satisfactory rapport.” This sounds a bit incredible to me now, but I know it is essentially true because I can recall the scorn I felt for one psychiatrist, not an analyst, who simply dealt with problem children as though he liked them. He even took them to his home. Clearly he had never learned the importance of being professional! #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Thus when I went to Rochester, New York, as a member of the Child Study Department—really a child guidance clinic for delinquent children and those who were wards of the social agencies because of their poor home environment—I knew what to do. I was so sure, that I remember (painfully) telling PTA and community groups that our clinic was rather similar to a garage: you brought in a problem, received an expert diagnosis, and were advised how the difficulty could be corrected. However, my views were gradually eroded. Living in a stable community, I found I had to live with the consequences of my advice and recommendations—and they did not always workout. Many of the children I worked with were housed temporarily in the detention home next door, so I could see them day after day. I was astonished that sometimes, after a particularly “good” interview where I had interpreted to a boy all the causes of his misbehaviour, he refused to see me the next day! So I had to win him back to find out what had gone wrong. I began to learn, experientially. Then as director of the new and independent Rochester Guidance Center, which replaced the Child Study Department, we had more self-referrals, where we had no authority whatsoever over child or parent and had to build a relationship if we were to help. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Then came a few incidents which markedly changed my approach; I shall tell you about the one that stands out most vividly in my mind. An intelligent mother brought her very seriously misbehaving boy to the clinic. I took the history from her myself. Another psychologist tested the boy. We decided in conference that the central problem was the mother’s rejection of her son. I would work with her on this problem. The other psychologist would take the boy on for play therapy. In interview after interview I tried—much more softly and gently now, as a result of experience—to help the mother see the pattern of her rejection and its results in the boy. All to no avail. After about a dozen interviews I told her I thought we had both tried but were getting nowhere, and we should probably call it quits. She agreed. Then, as she was leaving the room, she turned and asked, “Do you ever take adults for counseling here?” Puzzled, I replied that sometimes we did. Whereupon she returned to the chair she had just left and began to pour out a story of the deep difficulties between herself and her husband and her great desire for some kind of help. I was bowled over. What he was telling me bore no resemblance to the neat history I had drawn from her. I scarcely knew wat to do, but mostly I listened. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Eventually, after many more interviews, not only did her marital relationship improve, but her son’s problem behaviour dropped away as she became a more real and free person. To jump ahead a bit, she was the first client I ever had who continued to keep in occasional touch with me for years afterward, until her boy was doing well in college. This was a vital learning for me. I had followed her lead rather than mine. I had just listened instead of trying to nudge her toward a diagnostic understanding I had already reached. It was a far more personal relationship, and not nearly so “professional.” Yet the results spoke for themselves. From the words of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, let us concentrate on one verse: “The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” And from this verse, let us make one word—the word “deep”—the subject of our meditation. And from the 130^th Psalm let us concentrate on that one verse: “Out of the depth I have cried unto Thee, O Lord;” and let us make one word—the word “depth”—also the subject of our meditation. The words “deep” and “depth” are used in our daily life, in poetry and philosophy, in the Bible, and in many other religious documents, to indicate a spiritual attitude, although the words themselves are taken from a spatial experience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Depth is a dimension of space; yet at the same time it is a symbol for a spiritual quality. Most of our religious symbols have this character, reminding us of our finitude and our bondage to things that are visible. We are and we remain sensuous beings even when we deal with spiritual things. There is, on the other hand, a great wisdom in our language. It is the embodiment of innumerable experiences of the past. It is not by chance alone that we use certain visible symbols and do not use others. Therefore, it is often useful to find the reasons for the choices of the collective mind of former generations. It may become of ultimate significance to us, when we see what is implied int the terms like “deep,” “depth,” and “profound,” for the expression of our spiritual life. It may give us the impulse to strive for our own depth. “Deep” in its spiritual use has two meanings: it means either the opposite of “shallow,” or the opposite of “high.” Truth is deep and not shallow; suffering is depth and not height. Both the light of truth and the darkness of suffering are deep. There is a depth in God, and there is a depth out of which the psalmist cries to God. Why is truth deep? And why is suffering deep? And why is the same spatial symbol used for both experiences? These questions shall guide our meditation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

All visible things have a surface. Surface is that side of things which first appears to us. If we look at it, we know what things seems to be. Yet if we act according to what things and persons seem to be, we are disappointed. Our expectations are frustrated. And so we try to penetrate below the surfaces in order to learn what things really are. Why have people always asked for truth? Is it because they have known that the truth which does not disappoint dwells below the surfaces in the depth? And therefore, people have dug through one level after another. What seemed true one day was experiences as a superficial the next. When we encounter a person, we receive an impression. However, often if we act accordingly we are disappointed by one’s actual behaviour. We pierce a deeper level of one’s character, and for some time experience less disappointment. However, soon one may do something which is contrary to all our expectations; and we realize that what we know about one is still superficial. Again we dig more deeply into one’s true being. Since has been carried on this way. Science questions the common assumptions which seem to be true to everyone, to the lay-person as well as to the average scholar. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Then the genius comes and asks for the basis of these accepted assumptions; when they are proved not to be true, an Earthquake in science occurs out of the depth. Such Earthquakes occur when Copernicus asked if our sense-impressions could be the ground of astronomy, and when Einstein question whether there is an absolute point from which the observer could look at the motions of things. An Earthquake occurred when Marx questioned the existence of an intellectual and moral history independent of its economic and social basis. It occurred in the most eruptive way when the first philosopher questioned what everybody had taken for granted from times immemorial—being itself. When they became conscious of the astonishing fact, underlying all facts, that there is something and not nothing, an unsurpassable depth of thought was reached. In the light of these great and daring steps toward the deep things of our World, we should look at ourselves and at the opinions we take for granted. And we should see what there is in these things of prejudice, derived from our individual preferences and social surroundings. We should be shocked to notice how little of spiritual World is deeper than the surface, how little would be able to withstand a serious blow. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Something terribly tragic happens in all periods of human’s spiritual life: truths, once deep and powerful, discovered by the greatest geniuses through profound suffering and incredible labour, become shallow and superficial when used in daily discussion. How can and how does this tragedy occur? It can and does unavoidably occur, because there can be no depth without the way to the depth. Truth without the way to truth is dead; if it still be used, it contributes only to the surface of things. Look at the student who knows the content of the hundred most important books of World history, and yet whose spiritual life remains as shallow as it ever was, or perhaps becomes even more superficial. And then look at the uneducated worker who performs a mechanical task day by day, but who suddenly askes oneself: “What does it mean, that I do this work? What does it mean for my life? What is the meaning of my life?” Because one asks these questions, that person is on the way into depth, whereas the other person, the student of history, dwells on the surface among petrified bodies of thought, brought out of the depth by some spiritual Earthquake of the past. The simple worker may grasp truth, even though one cannot answer one’s questions: the learned scholar may possess no truth, even though one knows all the truths of the past. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

So much for the implications of this process. Let us see now how it specifically helps allay tension between the self and the idealized image. For no matter how a person may regard oneself consciously, the disparity between the two will take an unconscious toll; and the more one has succeeded in identifying oneself with the image, the more deeply unconscious will be the reaction. Most commonly it is expressed in self-contempt, rage against the self, and a feeling of coercion, all of which are not only extremely painful but in various ways incapacitate a person of living. Externalization of self-contempt may take on the form either of despising others or of feeling that it is others who look down upon oneself. Both forms are usually present; which is the more prominent, or at least the neurotic character structure. The more aggressive a person is, the more right and superior one feels, the more readily will one despise others, and the less likely would it be to enter one’s mind that others could look down on one. Conversely, the more complaint one is, the more will one’s self-recriminations for one’s failure to measure up to one’s idealized image tend to make one feel that others have no use for one. The effect of the latter is particularly damaging. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

When others feel that no one has a use for them, it makes a person shy, stilted, withdraw. It makes one overgrateful—indeed abjectly grateful—for any affection or appreciation shown one. At the same time one cannot accept even sincere friendliness at its face value, but vaguely takes it for a kind of undeserved charity. One is rendered defenseless against arrogant persons because part of one agrees with them, and one feels that one’s being treated contemptuously is quite in order. Naturally such reactions breed resentment, which if repressed and piled up may gather explosive strength. In spite of this, experiencing self-contempt in an externalized form has a distinct subjective value. To feel all one’s own scorn would smash whatever spurious self-assurance the neurotic may have and bring one to the verge of collapse. It is painful enough to be despised by others, but there is always hope of being able to change their attitude, or a prospect of paying them back in kind, or a mental reservation that they are unfair. When it is oneself one despises, all this is of no avail. There is no court of appeal. All the hopelessness of the neurotic unconsciously feels in regard to oneself would come into clear relief. One would start not only to despise one’s actual frailties but feel that one is altogether contemptible. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

This even one’s good qualities would be drawn into the abyss of one’s sense of unworthiness. In other words, one would feel oneself to be despised image; one would see it as an unalterable fact for which there was no help. This points to the advisability in therapeutic procedure of not touching upon self-contempt until the patient’s hopelessness is diminished and the grip of the idealized image considerably loosened. Only then will the patient be able to face it and come to realize that one’s unworthiness is no an objective fact but a subjective feeling stemming from one’s merciless standards. It taking a more lenient attitude toward oneself one will see that the condition is not unalterable, that the attributes one so objects to are not really despicable but are difficulties one can eventually overcome. We shall not understand the neurotic’s rage at oneself or the dimensions it assumes unless we keep in mind how immeasurably important it is for one to maintain the illusion that one is one’s idealized image. The fact that one not only feels despair at one’s inability to measure up to it but is absolutely infuriated at oneself is due to the sense of omnipotence that is an invariable attribute of the image. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

No matter how insurmountable the odds were against one in childhood, one, the omnipotent, should have been able to overcome them. Even if one realized intellectually how great one’s neurotic entanglements are, one nonetheless feels an impotent rage at having been unable to dispel them. This rage reaches a climax when one is confronted with conflicting drives and realizes that even one is powerless to attain contradictory goals. This is one of the reason why the sudden recognition of a conflict may throw one into a state of acute pain. “Behold, it came to pass that I, Nephi, did cry much unto the Lord my God, because of the anger of my brethren. However behold, their anger did increase against me, in so much that they did seek to take away my life. Yea, they did murmur against me, saying: Our younger brother thinks to rule over us; and we have had much trial because of him; wherefore, now let us slay him, that we may not be afflicted more because of his words. For behold, we will not have him to be our ruler; for it belongs unto us, who are the elder brethren, to rule over this people. Now I do not write upon these plates all the words which they murmured against me. However, it sufficeth me to say, that they did seek to take away my life. And it came to pass that the Lord did warn me, that I, Nephi, should depart from them and fess into the wilderness, and all those who would go with me. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

“Wherefore, it came to pass that I, Nephi, did take my family, and also Zoram and his family, and Sam, mine elder brother and his family, and Jacob and Joseph, my younger brethren, and also my sisters, and all those who would go with me. And all those who would go with me were those who believed in the warnings and the revelations of God; wherefore, they did hearken unto my words. And we did take our tents and whatsoever things were possible for us, and did journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. And after we had journeyed for the space of many days we did pitch our tents. And my people would that should call the name of the place Nephi’ wherefore, we did call it Nephi. And all those who were with me did take upon them to call themselves the people of Nephi. And we did observe to keep the judgments, and the statutes, and the commandments of the Lord in all things, according to the law of Moses. And the Lord was with us; and we did prosper exceedingly; for we did sow seed, and we did reap again in abundance. And we began to rise flocks, and herds, and animals of every kind. And I, Nephi, had also brought the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass; and also the ball, or compass, which was prepared for my father by the hand of the Lord, according to that which is written. And it came to pass that we began to prosper exceedingly, and to multiply in the land. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“And, I Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I know their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people. And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance. And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s temple. However, the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and work-personship thereof was exceedingly fine. And it came to pass that they would that I should be their kind. However I, Nephi, was desirous that they should have no king; nevertheless, I did for them according to that which was in my power. And behold, the words of the Lord had been fulfilled unto my brethren, which he spake concerning the, that I should be their ruler and their teacher according to the commandments of the Lord, until the time they sought to take away my life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from his presence. And he has caused the cursing to come upon them, yes, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin f blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities. And cursed shall be the seed for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done. And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey. And the Lord God said unto me: They shall be a scourge unto thy seed, to stir them up in remembrance of me; and inasmuch as they will not remember me, and hearken unto my words, they shall scourge them even unto destruction. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did consecrate Jacob and Joseph, that they should be priests and teachers over the land of my people. And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“And thirty years has passed away from the time we left Jerusalem. And I, Nephi, had kept the records upon my plates, which I had made, of my people thus far. And it came to pass that the Lord God said unto me: Make other plates; and thou shalt engraven many things upon them which are good in my sight, for the profit of thy people. Wherefore, I, Nephi, to be obedient to the commandments of the Lord, went and made these plated upon which I have engraven these things. And I engraven that which is pleasing unto God. And if my people are pleased with the things of God they will be pleased with mine engravings which are upon these plates. And if my people desire to know the more particular part of the history of my people they must search mine other plates. And it sufficeth me to say that forty years had passed away, and we had already had wars and contentions with our brethren,” reports 2 Nephi 5.1-34. Unto Thee, O Lord, we commend the soul of Thy servants, that dying to the World, they may live to Thee; and whatever sins they have committed through the frailty of Earthly life, do Thou clear away by Thy most loving and merciful forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Almighty God, as I cross the threshold of this day I commit myself, soul, body, affairs, friends, to Thy care; watch over, keep, guide, direct, sanctify, bless me. Incline my heart to Thy ways; mould me wholly into the image of Jesus, as a potter forms clay; let those around me see me living by Thy Spirit, trampling the World underfoot, unconformed to lying vanities, transformed by a renewed mind clad in the entire amour of God, shining as a never-dimmed light, showing holiness in all my doings. Let no evil this day soil my thoughts, words, hands. May I travel miry paths with a life pure from spot or stain. In needful transactions let my affection be in Heaven, and my love soar upwards in flames of fire, my gaze fixed on unseen things, my eyes open to the emptiness, fragility, mockery of Earth and its vanities. May I view all things in the mirror of eternity, waiting for the coming of my Lord, listening for the last trumpet call, hastening unto the new Heaven and Earth. Order this day all my communications according to Thy wisdom, and to the gain of mutual good. Forbid that I should not be profited or made profitable. May I speak each word as if my last word, and walk each step as my final one. If my life should end today, let this be my best day. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

Thank you for all of your interest in #PlumasRanch! If you haven’t seen these homes yet, check out the virtual tours on our website! Even better: check out our new blog — our first post features convenient links to all of our virtual tours. Link in bio. 🙌 https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-now-offering-virtual-tours/

Human beings, like plans, grow in the soil of acceptance. Nothing else can quite subsitute for a well-chosen, well-timed, beautiful home.
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My Heart is a Lonely Hunter that Hunts on a Lonely Hill!

April 23, 2020 1:02 am

With all the changes and challenges one faces each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine one’s priorities, and then with renewed focus, align one’s daily actions with one’s purpose or goals. Since one cannot know it all or do it all, it is vital that one learns to take the time to contemplate what it is one needs to know and what one need to do. The art of being wise is to know what to overlook. Where there is equality there can be sanity. Sooner or later it will happen: strength will change into consciousness. Some speculate that in the future, race will cease to be the basis of identity and special-interest power because of the growth in mixed-race people. This is called hybridity. It has been a long-standing dream that increased race mixing will solve our racial problems. Multiraciality disrupts our fixed notions about race and opens up new possibilities with respect to dialogue and engagement across the colour line. It does not, however, mean that race is over. Although the number of people of mixed-racial descent is unclear, and contingent on self-definition, the 2010 US census counted approximately 9 million individuals, or 2.9 percent of the people, self-identified as multiracial, and this has resulted in a growing literature on multiracial identity and its meaning for a racially stratified society. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

The repeal of antimiscegenation laws, the marked lessening of social distance between racial groups, and interracial marriage among specific groups have contributed to the growth and increased visibility of a multiracial population. I think the attitude toward persons outside our large family can be summed up schematically in this way: “Other persons behave in dubious ways which we do not approve in our family. Many of the play cards, go to movies, smoke, dance, drink, and engage in other activities, some unmentionable. So the best thing to do is to be tolerant of them, since they may not know better, but to keep away from any close communication with them and to live your life within the family. ‘Come ye out from among them and be ye separate’ is a good Biblical text to follow.” To the best of my recollection this unconsciously arrogant separateness characterized my behaviour all through elementary school. I certainly had no close friends. There were a group of boys and girls my age who rode bicycles together on the street behind our house. However, I never went to their homes, nor did they come to mine. As to the relations with others in my family, I thoroughly enjoyed being with and playing with my younger brothers, was jealous of my next older brother, and greatly admired my oldest brother, although the age gap was too great for much communication. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

I knew my parents loved me, but it would never have occurred to me to share with them any of my personal or private thought or feelings, because I knew these would have been judged and found wanting. My thoughts, my fantasies, and the few feelings I was aware of I kept to myself. I could sum up these boyhood years by saying that anything I would today regard as a close and communicative interpersonal relationship with another was completely lacking during that period. My attitude toward others outside my homes was characterized by the distance and the aloofness that I had taken over from my parents. I attended the same elementary school for seven years. From this point on, until I finished graduate work, I never attended any school for longer than two years, a fact that undoubtedly had its effect on me. Beginning with high school, I believe my hunger for companionship came a little more into my awareness. However, any satisfaction of that hunger was blocked first by the already mentioned attitudes of my parents, and second by circumstances. I attended three different high schools, none for more than two years, commuting long distances by train to each one, so that I never was able to put down any social roots and was never able to participate in any after-school or evening activities with others students. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

I respected and liked some of my fellow students, and some of them respected and probably liked me—perhaps partly because of my good grades—but there was never time enough to develop a friendship, and certainly I never had any close personal interaction with any of the. I had one date during high school—to attend a senior class dinner. So, during the important years of adolescence I had no close friends and only superficial personal contact. I did express some feelings in my English themes during the two terms when I had reasonably understanding teachers. At home I felt increasingly close to my next younger brother, but an age difference of five years cut down on any deep sharing. I was now more consciously a complete outsider, an onlooker in anything involving personal relationships. I believe my intense scientific interest in collecting and rearing the great night-flying moths was without doubt a partial compensation for the lack of intimate sharing. I realized by now that I was peculiar a longer, with very little place or opportunity for a place in the World of persons. I was socially incompetent in any but superficial contacts. My fantasies during this period were definitely bizarre, and probably would be classed as grand. College represented the first break in this solitary experience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

I entered the college of agriculture at the University of Wisconsin, and almost immediately joined a group of fellows who met in a YMCA class. Starting with this narrow interest, we developed into an ongoing, self-directed group carrying on all sorts of activities. Here I first discovered what it meant to have comrades and even friends. There was lively, enjoyable, and interesting discussion of attitudes and ideas about moral and ethical issues. There was even some sharing of personal problems, especially on a one-to-one basis. For two years this group meant a great deal to me, until I shifted to majoring in history in the College of Letters and Science and gradually lost contact with them. During this period, I suppose I could say that I began my first groupings toward a professional life. I was the leader of a boys’ club, and enjoyed the experience. My concept of what to do was limited completely to activities in which we could engage—hikes, picnics, swimming, and the like. I do not recall that I ever encouraged, or that we had, any discussion on any matters of interest to the boys. The possibility of communication was evidently beginning to dawn on me so far as my peers were concerned, but I doubt if I ever dreamed of it as a possibility for these twelve-year-olds. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

I was also a camp counselor in a camp for underprivileged youngsters during the Summer, with eight counselors and one hundred boys under my supervision. The cherry-picking work in which we engaged part-time and the athletic activities afterward constituted my idea of a suitable program. Here I have my first memory of a most dubious attempt at a helping relationship. Some articles and money had disappeared in our dormitory. The evidence pointed to one boy. So I and several of the counselors took him off by himself to get a confession from him. The term “brainwashing” had not been considered, but we had a real expertise at it. We cajoled, we argued, we persuaded, we were friendly, we were critical—some ever prayed for him—but he withstood all our attempts, much to our disappointment. As I look back on this embarrassing scene, I gather that my concept of helping another person was to get hit to confess his evil ways so that he might be instructed in the proper way to go. In other directions, however, I was becoming more of a social being. I began dating young women, fearfully to be sure, but a start. I found I could express myself more freely with mature young ladies, and as a freshman I dated several seniors. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

I also began going with Sarah, the young lady who late became my wife, and here an increasingly deep communication of hopes, ideals, and aims gradually began to take place. After two years of college we were separated by distance, but the courtship and frequent contacts continued for two more years before we were married. As I look back, I realize this was the first truly caring, close, sharing relationship I had ever formed with anyone. It meant the World to me. During the first two years of marriage we learned a vitally important lesson. We learned, through some chance help, that the elements in the relationship that seemed impossible to share—the secretly disturbing, dissatisfying elements—are the most rewarding to share. This was a hard, risky, frightening thing to learn, and we have relearned it many, many times since. It was a rich and developing experience for each of us. Meanwhile, in graduate school at Union Theological Seminary in New York, we were sharing in several courses as well as pursuing our own separate directions—she becoming more of an artist until motherhood occupied much of her time, while I continued my studies. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Although I became more and more turned off by the academic courses in religion, there were two experiences that helped to shape my way of relating to others. The first was a self-organized, self-directed seminar of students wit no faculty leader. Here we shared responsibility for the topics we considered and the way we wanted to conduct the course. More important, we began to share our doubts, our personal problems with our work. We became a mutually trusting group, discussing deep issues, and arriving at understandings which change the lives of a number of us. The second experience was a course on “Working with Young People” conducted by Dr. Goodwin Watson, who, before his death, was a prominent and active National Training Laboratories (an organization of group leaders that is especially active in business groups) trainer and progressive leader in education. While taking this course, I had my first clear realization that working closely with individuals might be a profession. This possibility offered me a way out of religious work, and as a result of these two experiences I shifted “across the street” (literally) to Teachers College, Columbia, where Goodwin Watson became my thesis supervisor, and I began taking work in clinical psychology. I was also exposed to the thinking of John Dewey, through William Heard Kilpatrick. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

I had by this time made tentative steps toward understanding relationships with others. My learnings were to be important to me later. I had learned that deep sharing with others was possible and enriching. I had learned that in a close relationship the elements that “cannot” be shared are those that are most important and rewarding to share. I had found that a group could be trusted to move in the direction of highly significant and relevant personal learnings. I was even beginning to learn that an individual faculty sponsor could trust the student one was supervising, with only growthful effects. I had discovered that persons in trouble could be helped, but that there were very divergent ideas as to how this could be done. We have seen how all the pretenses to which a neurotic resorts in order to bridge the gap between one’s real self and one’s idealized image serve in the end only to widen it. However, because the image is of such tremendous subjective value one must continue unremittingly to try to come to terms with it. The ways in which one goes about this are manifold. When I call this attempt externalization I am defining the tendency to experience internal processes as if they occurred outside oneself and, as a rule, to hold these external factors responsible for one’s difficulties. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

In has in common with idealization the purpose of getting away from the real self. However, while the process of retouching and recreating the actual personality remains, as it were, within the precincts of self, eternalization means abandoning the territory of self altogether. To put it simply, a person can take refuse from one’s basic conflict in one’s idealized image; but when discrepancies between the actual self and the idealized one reach a point where tensions become unbearable, one can no longer resort to anything withing oneself. The only thing left then is to run away from oneself entirely and see everything as if it lay outside. Some of the phenomena that occur here are covered by the term projection, meaning the objectifying of personal difficulties. As commonly applied, projection means the shifting of blame and responsibility to someone else for subjectively rejected trends or qualities, such as suspecting others of one’s own tendencies toward betrayal, ambition, domination, self-righteousness, meekness, and so one. In this sense the term is perfectly acceptable. Externalization, however, is a more comprehensive phenomenon; the shifting of responsibility is only part of it. Not only one’s faults are experienced in others but to a greater or less degree all feelings. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

A person who tends to externalize may be profoundly disturbed by the oppression of small countries, while unaware of how much one one’s self feels oppressed. One may not feel one’s own despair but will emotionally experience it in others. What s particularly important in this connection, one is unaware of one’s own attitudes toward oneself; one will, for example, feel that someone else is angry with one when one actually is angry with oneself. Or one will be conscious of anger at others that in reality one directs at oneself. Further, one will be seen as the decree of fate, one’s successes will be laid to fortuitous circumstances, one’s high spirits to the weather, and so one. When a person feels that one’s life for good or ill is determined by others, it is only logical that one should be preoccupied with changing them, reforming them, pushing them, protecting oneself from their interference, or impressing them. In this way externalization makes for dependence upon others—a dependence, however, quite different from that created by a neurotic need for affection. It also makes for overdependence upon eternal circumstances. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Whether the person lives in the city or the suburbs, whether one keeps this or that diet, goes to be early or late, serves on this or that committee, assumes undue importance. One thus acquires the characteristics called extraversion. However, while it is called extraversion as a one-sided development of constitutionally given trends, I see it as the result of trying to remove unsolved conflicts by eternalization. Another inevitable product of externalization is a gnawing sense of emptiness and shallowness. Again this feeling is not properly allocated. Instead of feeling the emotional emptiness as such, the person experiences it as emptiness in one’s stomach and tries to do away with it by compulsive eating. Or one may fear that one’s lack of bodily weight could cause one to be tossed about like a feather-any storm, one feels, might carry one away. One may even say that one would be nothing but an empty shell if everything were analyzed. The more thoroughgoing the externalization, the more the neurotic becomes wraithlike and apt merely to drift. If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Lehi counsels and blesses his posterity—he dies and is buried—Nephi glories in the goodness of God—Nephi puts his trust in the Lord forever. About 588-570 Before Christ. “And now, I, Nephi, peak concerning the prophecies of which my father hath spoken, concerning Joseph, who was carried into Egypt. For behold, he truly prophesied concerning all his seed. And the prophecies which he wrote, there are not many greater. And he prophesied concerning us, and our future generations; and they are written upon the plates of brass. Wherefore, after my father had made an end of speaking concerning the prophecies of Joseph, he called the children of Laman, his sons, and his daughters, and said unto them: Behold, my sons and the daughters of my firstborn, I would that ye should give ear unto my words. For the Lord God hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall proposer in the land; and inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence. However, behold, my sons and my daughters, I cannot go down to my grave save I should leave a blessing upon you; for behold, I know that if ye are brought up in the way ye should go ye will not depart from it. Wherefore, if ye are cursed, behold, I leave my blessing upon you, that the cursing may be taken from you and be answered upon the heads of your parents. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

“Wherefore, because of my blessing the Lord God will not suffer that ye shall perish; wherefore, he will be merciful unto you and unto your seed forever. And it came to pass that after my father had made an end of speaking to the sons and daughters of Laman, he caused the sons and daughters of Lemuel to be brought before him. And he spake unto them, saying: Behold, my sons and my daughters, who are the sons and the daughters of my second son; behold I leave unto you the same blessing which I left unto the sons and daughters of Laman; wherefore, thou salt not utterly be destroyed; but in the end thy seed shall be blessed. And it came to pass that when my father had made an end of speaking unto them, behold, he spake unto the sons of Ishmael, yea, and even all his household. And after he had made an end of speaking unto them, he spake unto Sam, saying: Blessed art thou, and thy seed; for thou shalt inherit the land like unto thy brother Nephi. And thy seed shall be numbered with his seed; and thou shalt be even like unto thy brother, and thy seed like unto his seed; and thou shalt be blessed in thy days. And it came to pass after my father, Lehi, had spoken unto all his household, according to the feelings of his heart and the Spirit of the Lord which was in him, he waxed old. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

“And it came to pass that he died, and was buried. And it came to pass that not many days after his death, Laman and Lemuel and the sons of Ishmael were angry with me because of the admonitions of the Lord. For I, Nephi, was constrained to speak unto them, according to his word; for I had spoken many things unto them, and also my father, before his death; many of which sayings are written upon mine other plates; for a more history part are written upon mine other plates. And upon these I write the things of my soul, and many of the scriptures which are engraven upon the plates of brass. For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children. Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me. And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

“My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. He hath confounded mine enemies, unto the causing of them to quake before me. Behold, he hath heard my cry by day, and he hath given me knowledge by visions in the night-time. And by day I have waxed bold in mighty prayer before him; yea, my voice have I sent up on high; and Angels came down and ministered unto me. And upon the wings of his Spirit hath my body been carried away upon exceedingly high mountains. And mine eyes have beheld great things, yea, even too great for humans; therefore I was bidden that I should not write them. O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of humans hath visited people in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions? And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh? Yea, why should I give way to temptations, that the evil one have place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul? Why am I angry because of mine enemy? #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

“Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul. Do not anger again because of mine enemies. Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions. Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation. O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul? Wilt thou deliver me out of the hands of mine enemies? Wilt thou make me that I may shake at the appearance of sin? May the gates of hades be shut continually before me, because that my heart is broken and my spirit is contrite! O Lord, wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me, that I may walk in the path of the low valley, that I may be strict in the plain road! O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness! O Lord, wilt thou make a way for mine escape before mine enemies! Wilt thou make my path straight before me! Wilt thou not place a stumbling block in my way—but that thou wouldst clear my way before me, and hedge not up my way before me, and hedge not up my way, but the ways of mine enemy. O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is one that putteth one’s trust in the arm of flesh. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

“Yea, cursed is one that putteth one’s trust in humans or humankind flesh one’s arm. Yea, I know that God will give liberally to one that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss; therefore I will lift up my voice unto thee; yea, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness. Behold, my voice shall forever ascend unto thee, my rock and mine everlasting God. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 4.1-35. O God, The Author of All Good, I come to Thee for the grace anther day will require for its duties and events. I step out into a wicked World, I carry about with me an evil heart, I know that without Thee I can do nothing, that everything with which I shall be concerned, however harmless in itself, may prove an occasion of sin or folly, unless I am kept by thy power. Hold Thou me up and I shall be safe. Preserve my understanding from subtility of error, my affections from love of idols, my character from stain of vice, my profession from every form of evil. May I engage in nothing in which I cannot implore Thy blessing, and in which I cannot invite Thy inspection. Prosper me in all lawful understakings, or prepare me for disappointments; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or be poor, and steal, and take Thy name in vain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

May every creature be made good to me by prayer and Thy will; teach me how to use the World, and not abuse it, to improve my talents, to redeem my time, to walk in wisdom toward those without, and in kindness to those within, to do good to all people, and especially to my fellow Christians. And to Thee be glory. O Lord, holy Father, Almighty and everlasting God, hear us, and preserve this Thy servants to whim Thou hast redeemed by the price and the great gift of the Blood of Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth. We implore the mercy of Thy Majesty, that it may please Thee to give to this Thy servants and pardon our sins, that we being delivered from all the bounds of the enemy may cleave to Thy commandments with our whole heart, and evermore love Thee alone with all one’s strength, and one day be counted worthy to attain to the sight of Thy blessedness; through Christ our Lord. O Holy Lord, Father Almighty, everlasting God, we entreat Thee in faith that our brothers and sisters, receiving the most holy Body and Blood of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, may enjoy health both in body and soul; through the same our Lord. Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer, hear us when we pray to Thee for our sick people, that Thy Holy Eucharist may avail for the preservation of their souls and body, and for their attainment of eternal life, Who livest and Lovest all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Let Us Live then and be Glad while Young Life is Before Us!

April 21, 2020 12:59 am

Enjoy your own company. Learn to welcome solitude and work on your own inner being—your character. Solitude allows you opportunity to think deep thoughts. To think about where you have been. To think about where you are going. To think about why you feel so strongly about certain issues. To think about how different your values are from those other people you know. To think about wat all people have in common. To question yourself about why you cling to bad habits. To praise yourself for your strengths. To challenge yourself to follow your dreams. Reflection and solitude feed the soul. Again, all you have to do is pause to rest. Nature herself, when we let her, will take care of everything else. It is our impatience that spoils things. Perhaps we can come a little closer to the nature of memory by looking at it in the company of its traditional associates, common sense and imagination. The internal senses, as the are called, are distinguished from the external senses. They are three in number: common sense, memory, and imagination. The common sense was the faculty that unified the data of the external or special senses. Each sense did what is “proper” to it, the eye seeing, the ear hearing, and the like. What was “common” to disparate sensations was organized into a whole by the common sense. The result was a shape or figure of an object. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Common sense also gave meaning to successive affective aspects of experiences, such as pleasure and pain, and oragnised experience into things to be pursued and things to be avoided. To some philosophers, notably Avicenna, the evaluation of sensory experience was distinctive enough to furnish evidence of a separate power, the estimative faculty. The common sense moreover, supplied the dimensions of consciousness or awareness of experience. No sense was aware of its own activity, but the common sense identified the work of each sense. Hence, one “knew” that one as subject was undergoing or “receiving” the experience. In brief, common sense was the receiver, organizer, and evaluator of stimuli from the special senses. In the vocabulary of Schoolmen, its products were the “common sensibles,” as St. Thomas Aquinas said, or in modern parlance, perceptions. Its work dealt with the realities of concrete, everyday experience. In the system of communication among things mental and sensory, the common sense passed along its products to the memory for storage. The basic material of memory, then, was held to be a first-level classification of experience—possibly one could say, first-level abstraction—that in character was much closer to the World of the senses than to the life of the intellect. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The imagination as an internal sense was the sole faculty having the power to handle images in the absence of the stimulation that originally gave rise to them. A person might look at London Bridge and go on about one’s business. Later one’s visions of it were the work of the imaginative faculty, imagination. It also made images of its own and in this, its creative role, it was often called fancy. In its reproductive capacity, say imagining London Bridge in the absence of the object, was the imagination responsible for recall or was the memory? Some theorizers, Descartes for example, held that common sense acted like a seal and impressed shapes on the imagination, which retained them, at least for a time. If imagination remembered the shapes of things and recalled them, did memory in its proper role have nothing to do with images? Believers in Galen would quote him: “that part of the soul which imagineth, whatsoever the same may be, seemeth to be the selfe that also remembereth.” Followers of Aristotle maintained that sense images go directly to the imagination which transmits them to the memory. There they are kept until wanted, whereupon the imagination returns and scans the record, behaving much like a person who writes something, lays it aside, and returns to read. In this account, some of the stuff of memory included images. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

As the retentive faculty, memory also stored the products of the understanding and reason. These products were much more abstract than those of common sense and imagination, ranging from the less abstract forms only slightly removed from the sensory levels of experience to the highest abstractions humans were aware of when they thought in terms mathematical, philosophical, and theological. It seems clear, then that, memory is the recorder, the storehouse, the treasury, of a human’s entire experience. However, it is not clear whether memory is held to be solely, or even primarily, responsible for recall and recollection. Especially in recovering and reinstituting a particular image from the past, one’s imagination seemed to be chiefly involved in the effort and to be doing much of the remembering. In the seventeenth century keen analysts of human nature were less ready then Schoolmen to draw neat borderlines among the psychological functions. When we assert that the senses respond to individuals only, that individuals pass entire into the memory, that individuals are impressions and images, we are implying that the end product of sensory activity is an image of a particular object—the sensory counterpart of a particular tree, a musical note, a spoken word. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Sense experience involves selection and rejection among stimuli emanating from objects—and that is all. The forms and shapes of things are part of the data presented to the senses. The sense do not interpret their own movements. Whatever the object of sensation, the object produces, in so far as it can, a likeness and image of itself, in imitation of incorporeal and spiritual nature. However, the immaterial copy of a material object was not merely that of a particular shape; upon it was impressed the species of the object as well. So what went into the memory whole was the shapes and species of things. The memory records the species of things, as a good register, ready when called for by the imagination and reason. Among human’s faculties we find no place for a common sense. We never use the term, nor do we allude to it. We never speak of common sensibles. Do we attribute any of the functions to this faculty to memory? As we have remarked, we give to memory the task of evaluating sense experience, because secondary objects—sense images—please or displease but in memory. Possibly this is another way of saying that the affective and emotional aspects of experience are stored in memory and that in the storehouse through some process of association they become guides to decision and conduct. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

We seem to have found no spot for an estimative faculty. This power, responsible for evaluating sense-bound or practical experience as distinct from intellectual or contemplative activity, sometimes has another name, the cogitative faculty. The French Academie, for example, takes note of those who recognize a knowing soule. All beings who possess this power are not sensitive creatures merely, but show a certain virtue and vigour, as of cogitation, of knowledge and memorie, that they may have skill to preserve their life, and know how to guide and govern themselves according to their natural inclination. A cogitative power so understood must not be confused with Bacon’s vis cogitiva, a power of thought fundamental to the functioning of all of human’s faculties. The passage in which Bacon announces that thinking goes on whenever humans exercise any of their faculties is important to us here in two ways. First, the distinction drawn among the mental faculties are broad ones in which Bacon is thinking in terms of genus and species. The genus of mental life is vis cogitiva; the species can be considered as memory, imagination, reason and the will and affections. On this basis, the faculties share in an activity that is substantial, not merely formal. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The faculties can be designated in part by noting their most general manifestations. Indeed, in the passage under scrutiny, reason is taken broadly enough to include understanding, as it does when Bacon, classifying all knowledge in sweeping terms, relates philosophy to reason. Second, in employing broad language Bacon assigns to memory the functions of remembering and recollecting. It is evident that to him memory was something more than a repository of experience. In the human being, memory referred to a kind of thinking, possible only because experience of all sorts and from all sources of stimulation could be both retained and recalled. The material of memory came from other kinds of thinking. At the higher levels of organized behaviour, the materials were products of understanding, reason, and will; at the lower levels of behaviour they were the experiences of the special sense, the affections, and the appetite. Among the qualities of affective states as they relate to memory were the pleasant and unpleasant. These became the guides to future action; they gave meaning to expectation. In the middle of things, as it were, was imagination. This faculty not only created images of its own and revived sense images but translated abstract thought into objects of sense. These, too, were engraved in memory, and on demand of the other faculties they were summoned up again. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

In recognizing an art of memory and placing it among the intellectual arts, Bacon was doubtless well aware that reasoning must presuppose memory. Reason typically isolates items of experience, analyzes them, and combines them into statements and patterns of which the classic examples are deduction, induction, and analogy. Such intellectual activity is reducible to separate, sequential operations. Each must be held in mind until the full pattern is completed. So memory is involved in reasoning. It is no merely evident in each insane of reasoning, but it also provides a storehouse of materials upon which the intellect can draw whenever it wishes. On these matters Edward Reynolds, a near contemporary of Bacon’s, is more explicit. Memory “preserveth” each separate act of the understanding “until a through [sic] concoction be wrought; so proportionably is the Faculty of Memory given to Reason, as a meanes to consolidate and enrich it.” In retaining experience, memory remembers not only the species of things brought to it by the senses, but it functions as “Consors & co-operatrix Rationis…a joynt-worker in the operations of Reason; which the Latins call Reminiscentia, or Recordatio; including some acts of the Understanding: Which is a reviewing, or (as we speake) a calling to minde of former objects, by discourse, or rationall searching for them.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The dependence of intellectual life upon memory led Aristotle, so Reynoldes reminded his readers, to regard remembrance as the remote ground of all the arts. Hobbes also linked memory to the retention of sense experience and to the “cause” and “coherence” of thoughts or conceptions. Sense always had “some memory adhering to it.” Certain sequences or coherences of thought, called reminiscence, experience, and expectation, were the chief manifestation of memory. It is somewhat surprising to find that Bacon has nothing to say about the physiological basis of memory. Another near contemporary of Bacon’s Sir Kenelm Digby, tried to explain remembrance by postulating vibratory, undulatory behaviour of atom-like particles in a “liquid vaporous” substance. The movements were analogous to those of musical sounds. Similar and simultaneous movements reinforced each other. A particular movement long at rest was revived by a similar undulatory motion. However, Bacon’s interest in the phenomena of recall, the art of memory, and the general nature of the faculty did not lead him int physiological speculations. In sum, Bacon regarded memory as a human’s power of recording and recalling their experience. It received and stored images from the external senses and it organized the affective accompaniments of sensory life in ways that made them meaningful guides to action. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

In common with human’s other faculties memory at work appeared to be thinking; hence, remembering was memory at work appeared to be thinking; hence, remembering was memory thinking. Memory kept the records of human’s analytical, critical, and imaginative thinking which in its symbolic and imageful garb was peculiarly the work of understanding, reason, and imagination. It not only kept the intellectual record; it was essential to its making. If they were to reason at all, humans had to remember. In reflecting on memory and its relationship to other faculties, one becomes aware of two striking, possibly unique, features. The explanation of human’s behaviour is being managed without recourse to as many “entities” and divisions of the soul as was the usual practice. The soul customarily had at least three parts or levels of being: vegetative, sensible, and rational. This vocabulary was abandoned by Bacon. The sensible soul was usually divided into two parts: the external or special senses, and the internal senses. Human’s internal sensory powers had numbered as many as seven, although common practice in the seventeenth century reduced the number to three: common sense, memory, and imagination. Bacon eliminated the common sense. As a result—or perhaps the cause—of the reduction in the number of human’s parts, a second important feature becomes evident. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Human’s sensory functions are closely associated with their intellectual functions, and vice versa. Bacon found that the faculties overlapped in their operations and that it was impossible to fix precise boundaries. The operations were often mutually dependent and the communication direct. Yet a rational act or a memorative act could be recognized as such, and hence was subject to study and improvement, without knowing exactly where reason began and memory left off. The operations of the faculties were very different, yet they closely linked and so near neighboured that they could be discerned separately: the understanding cannot work without the memory being present, representing unto the same the figures and fantasies agreeable thereunto, it behooved that the understanding part busy itself in beholding the phantasms, and that the understanding part busy itself in beholding the phantasms, and that the memory cannot do it, if the imagination do not accompany the same we shall easily understand, that all the powers are united in every several ventricle [of the brain], and that the understanding is not solely in the one, nor the memory solely in the other, nor the imagination in the third..but that this union of powers is accustomably made in human’s body [as is the union of the four natural abilities: digestive, retentive, attractive, and expulsive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

As we first turned away from God in our thoughts, so it is in our thoughts that the first movements toward the renovation of the heart occurs. Thoughts are the place where we can and must begin to change. There the light of God first begins to move upon us through the word of Christ, and there the divine Spirit begins to direct our will to more and more thoughts that can provide the basis for choosing to realign ourselves with God and his way. The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon. We are not totally free in this respect. However, we do have great freedom here, and even though “dead in trespasses and sins,” we still have the ability and responsibility to try to retain God in our knowledge—if only in an inadequate and halting manner. And those who do so will surely makes progress toward him; for if we truly do seek God as best we can, he, who always knows what is really in our hearts, will certainly make himself known to us. It is because of this fact that we always remain responsible before God, even though we are spiritually dead. By “thoughts” we mean all of the ways in which we are conscious of things. That includes our memories, perceptions, and beliefs, as well as what we would ordinarily refer to when we say “I thought of you yesterday,” or “I was just thinking of our meeting tomorrow.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Now clearly, our thoughts are one of the most basic sources of our life. They determine the orientation of everything we do and evoke the feelings that frame our World and motivate our actions. Interestingly, you cannot evoke thoughts by feeling a certain way, but you can evoke and to some degree control feelings a certain way, but you can evoke and to some degree control feelings by directing your thoughts. Our power over thoughts is of great and indispensable assistance in directing and controlling our feelings, which themselves are not directly under the guidance of our will. We cannot just choose our feelings. Our ability to think and represent things to ourselves also enables us to bring vast ranges of reality—and non-reality—before us. This is not always done in a way that is adequate to what we think about or in a way that is even correct. It is actually a part of the greatness of thought that it is not limited to accuracy or even reality. It can consider—bring before our mind—what is not the case but could be, or what ought to be though it is not, as well as what never should be. Our essential nature as active and creative beings depends upon our ability to envision what is not the case as well as what is. Our ability to plan for the future must constantly run ahead of reality. And this we do in thought. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

A will that runs ahead depends, of course, upon our abilities to think; and what we think, imagine, believe, or guess sets boundaries to what we can will or choose, and therefore to what we can create. As our senses present a landscape for our body and its actions, so our thoughts present the “lifescape” for our will and our life as a whole. Within that “thought lifescape” (including our perceptions) we make the decisions that determine what we will do and who we will become. The realm of thought involves four main factors. These are ideas, images, information, and our ability to think, but the two most powerful ones are ideas and images. “And now, my sons, I speak unto you thee things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that are in them are, both things to act and thing to be acted upon. And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of human, after he created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto humans that they should act for oneself. Wherefore, humans could not act for oneself save it should be that one was enticed by the one or the other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

“And I, Lehi, according to the thing which I have read, must needs suppose that an Angel of God, according to that which is written, had fallen from Heaven; wherefore, he became a devil, having sought that which was evil before God. And because he had fallen from Heaven, and had become miserable forever, he sought also the misery of all humankind. Wherefore, he said unto Eve, yea, even that old serpent, who is the devil, who is the father of all lies, wherefore he said: Partake of the forbidden fruit, and ye shall not die, but ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. And after Adam and Eve had partaken of the forbidden fruit they were driven out of the garden of Eden, to till the Earth. And they have brought forth children; yea, even the family of all the Earth. And the days of the children of human were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of humans. For he gave commandment that all humans must repent; for he showed unto all humans that there were lost, because of the transgression of their parents. And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remined in the garden of Eden. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

“And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. And they would have no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. However behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. Adam fell that humans might be; and people could raise their beautiful children true to their heritage; and humans are, that they might have joy. And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that one may redeem the children of humans from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given. Wherefore, humans are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto people. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all people, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for one seeketh that all humans might be miserable like unto oneself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

“And now, my sons, I would that ye should look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments; and be faithful unto his words, and choose eternal life, according to the will of his Holy Spirit; and not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hades, that he may reign over you in his own kingdom. I have spoken these few words unto you all, my sons, in the last days of my mortal probation on Earth; and I have chosen the good part, according to the words of the prophet. And I have none other object save it be the everlasting welfare of your souls. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 3.14-30. If the machine were used deliberately to vanquish human inequality, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process—by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute—the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over the past one hundred and fifty years. However, by lack of understanding some people remain sane. They simply swallow everything, and what they swallow does them no harm, because it leaves no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Lord Jesus, Great High Priest, Thou hast opened a new living way by which a fallen creature can approach Thee with acceptance. Help me to contemplate the dignity of Thy Person, the perfectness of Thy sacrifice, the effectiveness of Thy intercession. O What blessedness accompanies devotion, when under all the trials that weary me, the care the corrode me, the fears that disturb me, the infirmities that oppress me, I can come to Thee in my need and feel peace beyond understanding! The grace that restores is necessary to preserve, lead, guard, supply, help. And here Thy saints encourage my hope; they were once poor and are now rich, bound and are now free, tried and now are victorious. Every new duty calls for more face than I now possess, but not more than is found in Thee, the divine Treasury in whom all fullness dwells. To Thee I repair for grace upon grace, until every void made by sin be replenished and I am filled with all Thy fullness. May my desires be enlarged and my hopes emboldened, that I may honour Thee by my entire dependency and the greatness of my expectation. Do Thou by with me, and prepare me for all the smiles of prosperity, the frowns of adversity, the losses of substance, the death of friends, the days of darkness, the changes of life, and the last great change of all. May I find Thy grace sufficient for all my needs. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

I divine all teachers into two classes: titular gurus and real gurus. The former are quite common, the gap between their doctrines and their behaviour being noticeable, whereas the latter are rare indeed for they have achieved a conquest over the ego which reveals itself in their conduct and reflects itself in their lives. The demand for inspired teachers is always insistent but the supply is wholly insufficient. Unless the teacher is an inspired one one will be of little help to the would-be mystic. By inspired, we mean either in communion with one’s higher self or fully united with it. Almighty and everlasting God, Wo succourest those that labour under perils and afflictions, we humbly beseech Thy Majesty, that may please Thee to send Thy holy Angel to uphold with Thy comfort Thy servants, who in this house are suffering distress and affliction; that they may both receive Thy present assistance, and attain eternal healing; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Please visit Thy servants, O Lord, as Thou wast pleased to visit Peter’s mother-in-law and the centurion’s servants. Restore them, O Lord, to their former health; that they may be enabled to say in the courts of Thine house, “The Lord hath chastened and corrected me, but He hath not given me over unto death, He Who is the Saviour of the World.” Grant this, O Lord, Who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, God, throughout all ages. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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I am humbled by my realization of the sacredness of the time we are given and stunned by our irreverence for the time we have. Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savour you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the Earth, or burry my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want, more than all the World, your return. #CresleighHomes

Living on a Leash—The Cinderella Syndrome

April 20, 2020 2:57 am

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed. What is the true picture of your life? Imagine that there is an hourglass on your desk. Connecting the bowl at the top with the bowl at the bottom is a tube so thin that only one grain of sand can pass through it at a time. That is the true picture of your life, even on a super-busy day. The crowded hours come to you always one moment at a time. That is the only way they can come. The day brings many tasks, problems, strains, but invariably they come in single life. You want to gain emotional poise? Remember the hour glass, the grains of sand dropping one at a time. The Image is all the accumulated organized knowledge that the organism has about itself and its World. It includes everything that the organism has learned—values as well as facts—organized by whatever concepts, images, or relations it has been able to master. Imagines can be organized into structures they call “plans.” A plan is any hierarchical process that can control the order in which a sequence of actions is to be performed. At its simplest a plan is just a kind of elaborate concept. It is an idea of the steps needed to get from one situation to another—from London to Liverpool, for instance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

More elaborately, the steps in a plan might be: if hungry, you can get food by going to the kitchen, to the fridge, opening the door, getting out some cold Harris Ranch Beef, putting it on the grill, and so on. The nature of such a plan comes partly from experience (map) and partly from current information. A person may have a large repertory of plans, depending on where the starting-point is at which the situation arose, say, of being hungry. Equally, there may be a large variety of end-points, any of which would mean the satisfaction of the hunger. Hunger can be satisfied by eating. I can eat sandwiches or all other ways of satisfying hunger. I can buy sandwiches or all other ways of getting sandwiches. I can buy sandwiches at the corner shop or all other places to buy sandwiches. In each case, only one alternative plan, out of a huge number of possibilities at each level, is actually written out, to keep the example on the page; the reader has to use his or her imagination to fil in all the unstated alternatives. At each level in the sequence, information from the rest of the map or from the rest of the model can affect this process. A each level, alternative can be considered, and the alternative with the lest objections or the most advantages (minimizing displeasure or maximizing pleasure, whatever that may mean o a particular individual) can come to the force. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

For instance, the plan to alleviate hunger has steps that can take us to four different levels. From level 1 hunger can be satisfied by eating to level 2 I can eat sandwiches or all other ways of satisfying hunger could be changed by the knowledge that this would be the third lot of sandwiches of the say. A not very attractive images results and so that part of the plan could be dropped and another plan, “buy apples and pears,” substituted. Or there could be a change of plan at level 4 which states I can buy sandwiches at the corner shop or at other places to buy sandwiches, because yesterday the people at the corner shop has been rude to a customer, which has led to today’s decision to buy elsewhere. What can be said about the processes involved in the selection, evaluation, and correction of plans? There is a practical version called the “TOTE”—nothing to do with the racetrack, the word is an acronym for the sequences TEST-OPERATE-TEST-EXIT. A TOTE is a looped sequence, a feedback organization such that when an action (an operation) is undertaken, after which there is another test, and if things are still not right, there is another action, and so on, round and round in a loop. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The interpretation toward which the argument moves is one that has been called “cybernetics hypothesis,” namely that fundamental building-block of the nervous system is the feedback loop. Action is initiated by an incongruity between the state of the organism and the state that it is being tested for, and the action persists until the incongruity is removed. In words, a message comes in that something is happening peripherally (input). This message is TESTED centrally and may feel congruous with the map of how things should be, and that is the end of that (exit). However, if the message does not feel congruous with the map of how things should be, something is done: an OPERATION, which when TESTED, is then congruous with how thing should be and that is the end of it (exit). It can be seen that there may be several turns round the loop. Something is happening which, when tested, feels incongruous with how things should be. So something is done which, when tested, is incongruous with how things should be. So something is done which, when tested, is incongruous with how things should be. So something is done which, when tested, is (at last) congruous with how things should be and that is the end of it—exit. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

However, for example, is a person passes into a class they are not qualified for, one who passes can also suffer the classic and central experience of exposure during face-to-face interaction, betrayed by the very weakness one is trying to hide, by the others present, or by impersonal circumstances. The situation of the stutterer is an example: “We who stutter speak only when we must. We hide our defect, often so successfully that our intimates are surprised when in an unguarded moment, a word suddenly runs away with out tongues and we blurt and blat and grimace and choke until finally the spasm is over and we open our eyes to view the wreckage.” The epileptic subject to grandma seizures provides a more extreme case; one may regain consciousness to find that one has been lying on a public street, incontinent, moaning, and jerking convulsively—a discrediting of sanity that is eased only slightly by one’s not being conscious during some of the episode. I might add that the lore of every stigmatized grouping seems to have its own battery of cautionary tales of embarrassing exposure, and that most member seem able to provide examples from their own experiences. Finally, one who passes can find oneself called to a showdown by persons who have now learned of one’s secret and are about to confront one with one’s having been false. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

This showdown possibility can even be formally instituted, as in mental healthy hearings and the follow: Doreen, a Mayfair girl, says that court appearances are “about the worst part of it [id est, being a woman of the evening]. You go in through that door and everyone’s waiting for you and looking at you. I keep my head down and never look on either side. Then they say those awful words ‘Being a common woman of the evening…” and you feel awful. All the time not knowing who is watching you at the back of the court. You can say ‘guilty’ and get out as soon as you can.” The presence of fellow-sufferers (or the wise) introduced a special set of contingencies in regard to passing, since they very techniques used to conceal stigmas may give the show away to someone who is familiar with the tricks of the trade, the assumption being that it takes one (or those close to him or her) to know one: “Why do you not try a chiropractor?” she [a casual acquaintance] asked me, chewing corned beef, giving no slightest indication that she was about to known the bottom out of my World. “Dr. Fletcher told me he is curing one of his patients of deafness.” My heart skittered, in panic, against my ribs. What did she mean? “My dad is deaf,” she revealed. “I can spot a deaf person anywhere. That soft voice of yours. And that trick of letting your sentences trail off—not finishing them. Dad does that all the time.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

These contingencies help t explain the ambivalence previously mentioned that the individual may feel when confronted with one’s own kind. As Wright suggests: “A person who wishes to conceal one’s disability will notice disability-revealing mannerisms in another person. Moreover, one is likely to resent those mannerisms that advertise the fact of disability, for in wishing to conceal one’s disability one wishes others to conceal theirs. Thus it is that the person who is hard of hearing and who strives to hide this fact will be annoyed at the senior citizens who cups his or her hand behind her ear. Flaunting disability is a threat to one because it stirs up the guilt of having scorned one’s own group membership as well as the possibility of one’s own exposure. One may prefer surreptitiously to realize the other person’s secret and to maintain a gentlemen’s or gentlewomen’s agreement that both should play their “as if” roles to having the other person challenge one’ pretense by confiding one’s own. Control of identity information has a special bearing on relationships. Relationships can necessitate time spent together, and the more time the individual spends with another the more chance the other will acquire discrediting information about one. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Further, as already suggested, every relationship obliges the related persons to change an appropriate among of intimate facts about self, as evidence of trust and mutual commitment. Close relationships that the individual had before one came to have something to conceal therefore become compromised, automatically deficient in shared information. Newly formed or “post-stigma” relationships are very likely to carry the discreditable person past the point where one feels it has been honourable of one to withhold the facts. And, in some cases, even very fleeting relationships can constitute a danger, since the small talk suitable between strangers who have struck up a conversation can touch on secret failings, as when the wide of an impotent husband must answer questions as to how many children she had and, having none, why so. The phenomenon of passing has always raised issues regarding the psychic state of the passer. First, it is assumed that one must necessarily pay a great psychological price, a very high level of anxiety, in living a life that can be collapsed at any moment. A statement by a wife of a mental patient will illustrate: “…and suppose after George gets out everything is going well and somebody throws it up in his face. That would ruin everything. I live in terror of that—a complete terror of that.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

I think that close study of passers would show that this anxiety is not always found and that here our folk conceptions of human nature can be misleading. Secondly, it is often assumed, and with evidence, that the passer will feel torn between two attachments. One will feel some alienation from one’s new “group,” for one is unlikely to be able to identify fully with their attitude to what one knows one can be shown to be. And presumably one will suffer feelings of disloyalty and self-contempt when one cannot take action against “offensive” remarks made by members of the category one is passing into against the category one is passing out of—especially when one finds it dangerous to refrain from joining in this vilification. As discreditable persons suggest: “When jokes were made about ‘queers’ I had to laugh with the rest, and when talk was made about women I had to invent conquests of my own. I hated myself at such moments, but there seemed to be nothing else that I could do. My whole life became a lie. The tone of voice sometimes used [by friends] to refer to spinsters would shock me, as I felt I was cheating by in fact being in the state which married people looked at askance, while having the apparent status of a married women. I also felt somewhat dishonest with unmarried women friends who did not talk about these matters but eyed me with some curiosity and envy for having an experience which I did not in fact enjoy.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Another thing, it seems to be assumed, and apparently correctly, that one who passes will have to be alive to aspects of the social situation which others treat as uncalculated and unattended. What are unthinking routines for normal can become management problems for the discreditable. These problems cannot always be handled by past experience, since new contingencies always arise, making former concealing devices inadequate. The person with a secret failing, then, must be alive to the social situation as a scanner of possibilities, and is therefore likely to be alienated from the simpler World in which those around one apparently dwell. What is their ground is one’s figure. A young man who is near blind provides one example: “I managed to keep Mary from knowing my eyes were bad through two dozens sodas and three movies. I used every trick I had ever learned. I paid special attention to the color of her dress each morning, and then I would keep my eyes and ears and my sixth sense alter for anyone that might be Mary. I did not take any chances. If I was not sure, I would greet whoever it was with familiarity. They probably thought I was nuts, but I did not care. I always held her hand on the way to and from the movies at night, and she led me, without knowing it, so I did not have to feel for curbs and steps.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

A young boy with a “stricture,” who cannot pass water when in the presence of others, wanting to keep his differentness a secret, finds himself having to plot and plan and be wary, where others are merely having to be boys: “When I went away to boarding school at the age of ten there were new difficulties, and new ways of dealing with them had to be found. Generally speaking, it was never a case of making water when one wanted to, but always a case of doing so when one could. I felt it necessary to keep my disability secret from the other boys, since the worst thing that can happen to a boy at his prep. School is to be in any way “different;” so I went when they did to the school latrines, though nothing happened there but the increase of my envy of my fellows’ freedom to behave naturally, and even challenge one other to see how high up the wall they could reach. (I should have liked to join in, but if anyone challenged me, I had always ‘just finished.’) I used various stratagems. One was to ask to be excused during class, when the latrines would be deserted. Another was to stay awake at night and sneak to the restroom when the dormitory’s others occupants were asleep, or at least when it was dark and I could not be seen.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Similarly, one learns of the constant wariness of stutterers: “We have many ingenious tricks for disguising or minimizing our blocks. We look ahead for “Jonah” sounds and words, so-called because they are unlucky and we envy the whale his ease in expelling them. We dodge “Jonah” words when we can, substituting non-feared words in their places or hastily shifting our thought until the continuity of our speech becomes as involved as a plate of spaghetti.” And about the wife of a mental patient: Concealment often becomes cumbersome. Thus, to keep the neighbours from knowing the husband’s hospital (having reported that he was in the hospital because of suspicion of cancer), Mrs. Newsom must rush to her apartment to get the mail before her neighbours pick it up for her as they used to do. She has had to abandon second breakfasts at the coffee shop with the women in the neighbouring apartments to avoid their questions. Before she can allow visitors in her apartment, she must pick up any material identifying the hospital, and so on. And from a homosexual: “The strain of deceiving my family and friends often became intolerable. It was necessary for me to watch every word I spoke, and every gesture that I made, in case I gave myself away.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

A similar scanning may be illustrated among colostomy patients: “I never go to local movies. If I do go to the movie I select a large house like Radio City where I have greater choice of seats and can pick an end seat where I can rush to the bathroom is I have gas. When I go on a bus I pick my seat just in case. I sit on an end seat or near the door.” In all of this, special timing may be required. Thus, there is the practice of “living on a leash”—the Cinderella syndrome—whereby the discreditable person stays close to the place where one can refurbish one’s disguise, and where one can rest up from having to wear it; one moves from one’s repair station only that distance that one can return from without losing control over information about oneself: Since irrigation does constitute the primary defense against the occurrence of spillage, as well as representing a reparative activity of great emotional significance, patients with a colostomy frequently schedule travel and social contacts in relation to the time and effectiveness of irrigation. Travel is usually restricted to the distance which can be traversed in the interval between irrigations at home, and social contacts are limited to periods between irrigation which are believed to afford maximum protection against spillage or flatus. Patients can, therefore, be considered as living “on a leash” which is only as long as the time interval between irrigations. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

There is a final issue to be considered. As already suggested, a child with a stigma can pass in a special way. Parents, knowing of their child’s stigmatic condition, ay encapsulate one with domestic acceptance and ignorance of what one is going to have to become. When one ventures outdoors one does so therefore as an unwitting passer, at least to the extent that one’s stigma is not immediately apparent. At this point one’s parents are faced with a basic dilemma regarding information management, sometimes appealing to medical practitioners for strategies. If the child is informed about oneself at school age, it is felt one may not be strong enough psychologically to bear the news, and in addition may tactlessly disclose these facts about oneself to those who need not know. On the other hand, if one is kept too long in the dark, then one will not be prepared for what is about to happen to one and, moreover, may be informed about one’s condition by strangers who have no reason to take the time and care required to present the facts in a constructive, hopeful light. All you have to do is pause to rest. Nature herself, when we let her, will take care of everything else. It is our impatience that spoils things. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Redemption comes through the Holy Messiah—freedom of choice (agency) is essential to existence and progression—Adam fell that humans might be—humans are free to choose liberty and eternal life. About 588-570 Before Christ. “And now, Jacob, I speak unto you: Thou art my firstborn in the days of my tribulation in the wilderness. And behold, in thy childhood thou hast suffered afflictions and much sorrow, because of the rudeness of thy brethren. Nevertheless, Jacob, my firstborn in the wilderness, thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain. Wherefore, thy soul shall be blessed, and thou shalt dwell safely with thy brother. Nephi; and thy days shall be spent in the service of thy God. Wherefore, I know that thou art redeemed, because of the righteousness of thy redeemer; for thou hast beheld that in the fulness of time he cometh to bring salvation unto men. And thou hast beheld in thy youth his glory; wherefore, thou art blessed even as they unto whom he shall minister in the flesh; for the Spirit is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. And the way is prepared from the fall of human, and salvation is free. And humans are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto humans. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law human are cut off. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

“Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever. Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth. Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of he law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered. Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the Earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be though the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise. Wherefore, he is the firstfruits unto God, inasmuch as he shall make intercession for all the children of humans; and they that believe in him shall be saved. And because of the intercession for all, all people come unto God; wherefore, they stand in the presence of Him, to be judged of Him according to the truth and holiness which is in Him. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

“Wherefore, the ends of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, which punishment that is affixed is in opposition to that of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the atonement—for it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain dead, having no life neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God. And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

“And if there is no God we are not, neither the Earth; for there is no God. And if there is no God are not, neither the Earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither the Earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither the Earth; for there could have been no creation of things; neither to act nor t be acted upon; wherefore, all things must be vanished away,” reports 2 Nephi 2.10-13. When you do something, keep track of how you feel before, during, and after. Thou art the blessed God, happy in thyself, sources of happiness in Thy creatures, my Maker, Benefactor, Proprietor, Upholder. Thou hast produced and sustained me, supported and indulged me, saved and kept me; Thou art in every situation able to meet my needs and miseries. May I live by Thee, live for Thee, never be satisfied with my Christian progress but as I resemble Christ; and may conformity to his principles, temper, and conduct grow hourly in my life. Let Thy unexampled love constrain me into holy obedience, and render my duty my delight. If others deem my faith folly, my meekness infirmity, my zeal madness, my hope delusion, my actions hypocrisy, my I rejoice to suffer for Thy name. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Please keep me walking steadfastly towards the country of everlasting delights, that paradise-land which is my true inheritance. Support me by the strength of Heaven that I may never turn back, or desire false pleasures that wilt and disappear into nothing. As I pursue my Heavenly journey by Thy grace let me be known as a being with no aim but that of being a burning desire for Thee, and the good and salvation of my fellow humans. Look, O Lord upon Thy servants, who are suffering from their bodily infirmaries, and please refresh the soul which Thou hast created; that being bettered by Thy chastisement, it may straightway feel itself saved by Thy healing; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, with Whom it is an easy thing to give life to the dead; please restore the sick to their former health, and let none that implore the healing of Thy Heavenly mercy be in want of the remedies of Earthly medicine; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Christ our Lord, Who are the Physician of salvation, grant unto the sick and the assistance of Heavenly healing. Look upon all faithful people who are sick, and who love to call upon Thy Name, and take their souls into Thy keeping, and vouchsafe to deliver them from all sickness and infirmity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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One Half of the World Cannot Understand the Pleasures of the other, but in Charity there is No Excess!

April 18, 2020 12:35 am

A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep. Excellence in education is the key to our nation’s future. If we are truly to prepare for the challenges of tomorrow, we must empower all our students with the best schools and guidance possible. At a time when we face stark choices about how best to strengthen our economic future, our commitment to education and to children must stand absolutely firm. We have a sacred obligation to put our children’s needs first and to make the essential investments that will help them to succeed. The importance of the family for the moral development of individuals was far more often recognized by political theorists of the past than it is by those of the present. Hegel, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Mill, and Dewey are obvious examples that come to mind. Rousseau, for example, shocked by Plato’s proposal to abolish the family, says that it is “as though there were no need for a natural base on which to form conventional ties; as though the love of one’s nearest were not the principle of the love one owes the state; as though it were not by means of the small fatherland which is the family that the heart attaches itself to the large one.” Defenders of both autocratic and democratic regimes have recognized the political importance of different family forms for the formation of citizens. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

On the one hand, the nineteenth-century monarchist Louis de Bonald argued against the divorce reforms of the French Revolution, which he claimed had weakened the patriarchal family, on the grounds that “in order to keep the state out of the hands of the people, I is necessary to keep the family out of the hands of women and children.” Taking this same line of thought in the opposite direction, the United States Supreme Court decided in 1879 in Reynolds v. Nebraska that familial patriarchy fostered despotism and was therefore intolerable. Denying Mormon men the freedom to practice polygamy, the Court asserted that it was an offense “subversive of good order” that “leads to the patriarchal principle, [and] when applied to large communities, fetters the people in stationary despotism, while that principle cannot long exist in connection with monogamy.” However, while de Bonald was consistent in his adherence to an hierarchical family structure as necessary for an undemocratic political system, the Supreme Court was by no means consistent in promoting an egalitarian family as an essential underpinning for political democracy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

For in other decisions of the same period—such as Bradwell v. Illinois, the famous 1872 case that upheld the exclusion of women from the practice of women from the practice of law—the Court rejected women’s claims to legal equality, in the name of a thoroughly patriarchal, though monogamous, family that was held to require the dependence of women and their exclusion from civil and political life. While bigamy was considered patriarchal, and as such a threat to republican, democratic government, the refusal to allow a married woman to employ her talents and to make use of her qualifications to earn an independent living was not considered patriarchal. It was so far from being a threat to the civil order, in fact, that it was deemed necessary for it, and as such was ordained by both God and nature. Clearly in both Reynolds and Bradwell, “state authorities enforced family forms preferred by those in power and justified as necessary to stability and order.” The Court noticed the despotic potential of polygamy, but was blind to the despotic potential of patriarchal monogamy. This was perfectly acceptable to them as a training ground for citizens. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Most theorists of the past who stressed the importance of the family and its practices for the wider World of moral and political life by no means insisted on congruence between the structures of practices of the family and those of the outside World. Though concerned with moral development, they bifurcated public from private life to such an extent that they had no trouble reconciling inegalitarian, sometimes admittedly unjust, relations founded upon sentiment within the family with a more just, even egalitarian, social structure outside the family. Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville—all thought the family was centrally important for the development of morality in citizens, but all defended the hierarchy of the material structure while spurning such a degree of hierarchy in institutions and practices outside the household. Preferring instead to rely on love, altruism, and generosity as the basis for family relations, none of these theorists argued for just family structures as necessary for socializing children into citizenship in a just society. The position that justice within the family is irrelevant to the development of just citizens was not plausible even when only men were citizens. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

John Stuart Mill, in The Subjection of Women, takes an impassioned stand against justice in the family being considered irrelevant to the development of just citizens. He argues that the inequality of women within the family is deeply subversive of justice in general in the wider social World, because it subverts the moral potential of men. Mill’s first answer to the questions, “For whose good are all these changes in women’s rights to be undertaken?” is: “the advantage of having the most universal and pervading of all human relations regulated by justice instead of injustice.” Making marriage a relationship of equals, he argues, would transform this central part of daily life from “a school of despotism” into a “s school of moral cultivation.” He goes on to discuss, in the strongest of terms, the noxious effect of growing up in a family not regulated by justice. Consider, he says, “the self-worship, the unjust self-preference,” nourished by a boy growing up in a household in which “by the mere fact of being born a male he is by right superior of all and every one of an entire half of the human race.” Mill concludes that the example set by perpetuating a material structure “contradictory to the first principles of social justice” must have such “a perverting influence” that it is hard even to imagine the good effects of changing it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

All other attempts to educate people to respect and practice justice, Mill claims, will be superficial “as long as the citadel of the enemy is not attacked.” Mill felt as much hope for what the family might be as he felt despair at what it was not. “The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom,” primary among which was “justice, grounded as before on equal, but now also on sympathetic association.” Mills bot saw clearly and had the courage to address what so many other political philosophers either could not see, or saw and turned away from. Despite the strength and fervor of his advocacy of women’s rights, however, Mill’s idea of a just family structure falls short of that of many feminists even of his own time, including his wife, Harriet Taylor. In spite of the fact that Mill recognized both the empowering effect of earnings on one’s position in the family and the limiting effect of domestic responsibility on women’s opportunities, he balked at questioning the traditional division of labour between the genders. For him, a woman’s choice of marriage was parallel to a man’s choice of a profession: unless and until she has fulfilled her obligations to her husband and children, she should not undertake anything else. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

But clearly, however equal the legal rights of husbands and wives, this position largely undermines Mill’s own insistence upon the importance f marital equality for a just society. His acceptance of the traditional division of labour, without making any provision for wives who were thereby made economically dependent upon their husbands, largely undermines his insistence upon family justice as the necessary foundation for social justice. Thus even those political theorists of the past who have perceived the family and the wider social order, which suggests that families themselves need to be just. Even when they have, as with Mill, they have been unwilling to push hard on the traditional division of labour within the family in the name of justice or equality. Contemporary theorists of justice, with few exceptions, have paid little or no attention to the question of moral development—of how we are to become just. Most of them seem to think, to adapt slightly Hobbes’s notable phrase, that just men spring like mushrooms from the Earth. Not surprisingly, then, it is far less often acknowledged in recent than in past theories that the family is important for oral development, and especially for instilling a sense of justice. As I have already noted, many theorists pay no attention at all to either the family or gender. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

In the rare case that the issue of justice within the family is given any sustained attention, the family is not viewed as potential school of social justice. In the rare case that a theorist pays any sustained attention to the development of a sense of justice or morality, little if any attention is likely to be paid to the family. Even in the rare event that theorists pay considerable attention is likely to be paid to the family. Even in the rare event that a theorist pays any sustained attention to the development of a sense of justice or morality, little if any attention is likely to be paid to the family. Even in the rare event that theorists pay considerable attention to the family as the first major locus or moral socialization, they do not refer to the fact that families are almost all still thoroughly gender-structured institutions. Among major contemporary theorists of justice, John Rawls alone treats the family seriously as the earliest school of moral development. He argues that a just, well-ordered society will be stable if its members continue to develop a sense of justice. And he argues that families play a fundamental role in the stages by which this sense of justice is acquired. From the parents’ love for their child, which comes to be reciprocated, come the child’s “sense of one’s own value and the desire to become the sort of person that they are.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

The family, too, is the first of that series of “associations” in which we participate, from which we acquire the capacity, crucial for a sense of justice, to see things from the perspectives of others. This capacity—the capacity for empathy—is essential for maintaining a sense of justice of the Rawlsian kind. Rawlsian justice is a theory of justice as fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system. The goal is to create a permanently peaceful and tolerant international order. For the perspective that is necessary for maintaining a sense of justice is not that of the egotistic or disembodied self, or of the dominant few who overdetermine “our” traditions or “shared understandings,” or (to use Nagel’s term) of “the view from nowhere,” but rather the perspective of every person in the society for whom the principles of justice are being arrived at. The problem with Rawls’s rare and interesting discussion of moral development is that it rests on the unexplained assumption that family institutions are just. If gendered family institutions are not just, but are, rather, a relic of caste or feudal societies in which responsibilities, roles, and resources are distributed, not in accordance with innate differences that are imbued with enormous social significance, then Rawls’s theory of moral development would seem to be built on uncertain ground. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

This problem is exacerbated by suggestions in some of Rawls’s most recent work that families are “private institutions,” to which it is not appropriate to apply standards of justice. However, if families are to help form just individuals and citizens, surely they must be just families. In a just society, the structure and practices of families must give women the same opportunities as men to develop their capacities, to participate in political power and influence social choices, and to be economically secure. However, in addition to this, families must be just because of the vast influence that they have on the moral development of children. The family is the primary institution of formative moral development. And the structure and practice of the family must parallel those of the larger society if the sense of justice is to be fostered and maintained. While many theorists of justice, both past and present, appear to have denied the importance of at least one of these factors, my own view is that both are absolutely crucial. A society that is committed to equal respect for all of its members, and to justice in social distributions of benefits and responsibilities, can neither neglect the family nor accept family structures and practices that violate these norms, as do current gender-based structures and practices. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

It is essential that children who are to develop into adults with a strong sense of justice and commitment to just institutions spend their earliest and most formative years in an environment in which they are loved and nurtured, and in which principles of justice are abided by and respected. What is a child of either gender to learn about fairness in the average household with two full-time working parents, where the mother does, at the very least, twice as much family work as the father? What is a child to learn about the value of nurturing and domestic work in a home with a traditional division of labour in which the father either subtly or not so subtly uses the fact that he is the wage earner to “pull rank” on or to abuse his wife? What is a child to learn about responsibility for others in a family in which, after many years of arranging her life around those needs of her husband and children, a woman is faced with having to provide for herself and her children but is totally ill-equipped for the task by the life she agreed to lead, has led, and expected to go on leading? Difficulties already present in partnerships are sometimes brought in the open in person-centered climates. A young could had been living together and were planning to marry. They were together in an encounter group and asked the group’s permission to explore their relationship with the help of the participants. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

As they began to open up to each other, it was clear that they knew each other hardly at all. They had differing goals and sharply differing perceptions. For example, the young woman thought of herself as reasonably adequate, certainly not inferior. She was astonished and hurt to find that her lover saw her as much inferior to him in social status and intellect. As they explored their differences, they became much more open with each other, but their partnership seemed highly precarious. Yet a letter more than a year later told me of their marriage, their growing areas of mutual interest and work, and their current satisfaction with their relationship. Evidently the risk they took in exploring their profound differences had deepened the bonds of partnership rather than breaking them. The areas of difference may occur in a variety of fields. In one couple the husband is hedonistic, works when he had to, regards himself as essentially “a lazy bum,” while his wife is strongly imbued with a work ethic. Says she, “My heart skips a beat when I hear him say, ‘I just want to be rich and have fun.’” She thinks he should be more serious about his work. It is an indication of the incredible complexity of human relationships that the work-oriented wife is, with her husband’s consent, a topless go-go danger, while the “lazy bum” is business! However, exploration of their differing goals is helping to bring them together. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus enjoined His followers to prayerful tenacity: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; known and the door will be opened to you,” reports Matthew 7.7. The language is unusually compelling because the three verbs (“ask…seek…knock”) indicate an ascending intensity. “Ask” implies requesting assistance for a conscious need. It also suggests humility, for the Greek word here was commonly used by one approaching a superior. “Seek” involves asking, but adds action. The idea is not just to express need, but to get up and look around for help. “Knock” includes asking, plus seeking, plus persevering—for example, one who keeps pounding on a closed door. The stacking of these verbs is powerful, and the fact that they are present imperatives gives them even more punch. Jesus’ words actually read: “Keep on asking, and it shall be given to you; keep on seeking, and you will find; keep on knocking, and it shall be opened to you.” Such tenacity is exactly what Paul has in mind in his call to petitionary prayer when he says to “be alert and always keep on praying.” Men and women, do we pray with Scriptural persistence for our families? For the Church? Are there individuals, groups, causes, souls for which we hold up our hands in prayer? There ought to be, for God answers persistent prayer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Now, the simplicity of spiritual formation is possessed in its intention. Its aim is to bring every element in our being, working from inside out, into harmony with the will of God and the kingdom of God. This is the simple focus. We must keep it constantly before us and not be distracted by other things, no matter how good they may appear. Of course, we cannot realize this goal on our own. However, there is no need for that. God has made provision for achieving this aim. To “grow in grace” means to utilize more and more grace to live by, until everything we do is assisted by grace. Then, whatever we do in word or deed will all be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. “And whatever you do whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him,” reports Colossians 3.17. The greatest saints are not those who need less grace, but those who consume the most grace, who indeed are most in need of grace—those who are saturated by grace in every dimension of their being. Grace to the is like breath. Spiritual formation is holistic. Each dimension of spirituality is not separate, so we must keep a sharp awareness that they are always profoundly influencing one another in the flow of real life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Real life means the totality of the events we are actually involved in and the actions we actually carry out. In Spiritual formation the process and the outcome in Christ is beneficial to our lives. There are no formulas—no definitive how-tos—for growth in the inner character of Jesus. Such growth is a way of relentless seeking. However, there are many things we can do to place ourselves at the disposal of God, and “if with all our hearts we truly seek him, we shall surely find him,” reports Jeremiah 29.13. Or, as the prophet Azariah said, “If you seek Him, He will let you find him,” We can count on God’s goodness. The Second Book of Nephi—an account of the death of Lehi. Nephi’s brethren rebel against him. The Lord warns Nephi to depart into the wilderness. His journeyings in the wilderness, and so forth. In chapter 1, Lehi prophesies of a land of liberty—his seed will be scattered and smitten if they reject the Holy One of Israel—he exhorts his sons to put on the armor of righteousness. About 588-570 Before Chris. “And now it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had mad an end of teaching my brethren, our father, Lehi, also spake many things unto them, and rehearsed unto them, how great things the Lord had done for them in bringing them out of the land of Jerusalem. And he spake up them concerning the rebellious upon the waters, and the mercies of God in sparing their lives, that they were not swallowed up in the sea. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

“And he also spake unto them concerning the land of promise, which they had obtained—how merciful the Lord has been in warning us that we should flee out of the land of Jerusalem. For, behold, said he, I have seen a vision, in which I know that Jerusalem is destroyed; and had we remained in Jerusalem we should also have perished. However, he said, notwithstanding our afflictions, we have obtained a land of promise, land which is choice above all other lands; a land which the Lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of my seed. Yea, the Lord hath covenanted this land unto me, and to my children forever, and also all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord. Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord. Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him who he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shell be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall blessed forever. And behold, it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations; for behold, many nations would over run the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

“Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves. And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments they shall be blessed upon the face of this land, and there shall be none to molest them, nor take away the land of their inheritance; and they shall dwell safely forever. However, behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blessings from the hand of the Lord—having a knowledge of the creation of the Earth, and all people, knowing the great and marvelous works of the Lord from the creation of the World; having power given them to do all things by faith; having all the commandments from the beginning, and having been brought by his infinite goodness into this precious land of promise—behold, I say, if the day shall come that they will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, behold the judgments of him that is just shall rest upon them. Yea, he will bring other nations unto them, and he will give unto them power, and he will take away from them the lands of their possessions, and he will cause them to be scattered and smitten. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

“Yea, as one generation passeth to another there shall be bloodsheds, and great visitations among them; wherefore, my sons, I would that ye would remember; yea, I would that ye would hearken unto my words. O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of humans, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gul of misery and woe. Awake! And arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the Earth. However, behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love. And I desire that ye should remember to observe the statuses of the judgments of the Lord; behold, this hath been the anxiety of my soul from the beginning. My heart hath been weighed down with sorrow from time to time, for I have feared, lest for the hardness of your hearts the Lord your God should come out in the fullness of his wrath upon you, that ye are visited by sword, and by famine, and are hated, and are led according to the will and captivity of the devil. O my sons, that these things might be a choice and a favoured people of the Lord. However, behold, his will be done; for his ways are righteous forever. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

“And he hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence. And now that my soul might have joy in you, and that my heart might leave this World with gladness because of you, that I might not be brought down with grief and sorrow to the grave, arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may not come down into captivity; that ye may not be cursed with a sore cursing; and also, that ye may not incur the displeasure of a just God upon you, unto the destruction, yes, the eternal destruction of both soul and body. Awake, my sons; put on the armour of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity and arise from the dust. Rebel no more against your brother, whose views have been glorious, and who hath kept the commandments from the time that we left Jerusalem; and who hath been an instrument in the hands of God, in bringing us forth into the land of promise; for were it not for him, we must have perished with hunger in the wilderness; nevertheless, ye sought to take away his life; yea, and he hath suffered much sorrow because of you. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“And I exceedingly fear and tremble because of you, lest he shall suffer again; for behold, ye have accused him that he sought power and authority over you; but I know that he hath not sought for power nor authority over you, but he hath sought the glory of God, and your own eternal welfare. And ye have murmured because he hath been plain unto you. Ye say that he hath used sharpness; ye say that he hath been angry with you; but behold, his sharpness was the sharpness of the power of the word of God, which was in him; and that which ye call anger was the truth, according to that which is in God, which he could not restrain manifesting boldly concerning your iniquities. And it must needs be that the power of God must be with him, even unto his commanding you that ye must obey. However, behold, it was not he, but it was the Spirit of the Lord which was in him, which opened his mouth to utterance the he could not shut it. And now my son, Laman, and also Lemuel and Sam, and also my sons who are the sons of Ishmael, behold, if ye will hearken unto the voice of Nephi ye shall not perish. And if ye will hearken unto him I leave unto you a blessing, yea, even my first blessing. However, if ye will not hearken unto him I take away my first blessing, and it shall rest upon him. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

“And now, Zoram, I speak unto you: Behold, thou art the servant of Laban; nevertheless, thou hast been brought out of the land of Jerusalem, and I know that thou art a true friend unto my son, Nephi, forever. Wherefore, because thou hast been faithful thy seed shall be blessed with his seed, that they dwell in prosperity long upon the face of this land; and noting, save shall be iniquity among them, shall hard or disturb their prosperity upon the face of this land forever. Wherefore, if ye shall keep the commandments of the Lord, the Lord hath consecrated this land for the security of thy seed with the seed of my son,” reports 2 Nephi 1-32. All-sufficient King, when I come into Thy presence I see the gory of Thy perfections, the throne f eternal and universal empire, the ten thousand times ten thousand who minister to Thee. Impress my mind with the consciousness of Thy greatness, not to drive me from Thee but to inspire me to approach thee; not to diminish my confidence in Thee, but to lead me to admire Thy great condescension. Thou has been mindful of me and visited me, taken charge of me from birth, cared in all conditions for me, fed me at Thy table, drawn the curtains of love around me, given me new mercies every morning. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Suffer me not to forget that I look for yet greater blessings—a hope beyond the grave, the earnest and foretastes of immortality, holiness, wisdom, strength, peace, joy—all these thou hast provided for me in Christ. I grieve to think how insensible I have been of the claims of Thy authority, and the endearments of Thy love; how little I have credited Thy truth, trusted Thy promises, feared Thy threats, obeyed Thy commands, improved my advantages, welcomed Thy warnings, responded to Thy grace; but notwithstanding my desert I yet live. May Thy goodness always lead me to repentance, and Thy longsuffering prove my salvation. O God, by Whose command the moments of our life run their course; receive our prayers for Thy servants lying sick, on whose behalf we implore Thy mercy; that our fears on account of their danger may be turned into joy at their recovery; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, the eternal Salvation of believers, hear us for Thy servants, for whom we implore the assistance of Thy mercy; that their healthy may be restored to them, and they may give thanks to Thee in Thy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who didst add fifteen years to the life of Thy servant Hezekiah; please let Thy power raise up Thy servants from the bed of sickness unto health; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

Category Archives: Self-resurrection

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